[WBEL-users] Problem with grep

[Benedikt Carda]

Dear All,

I am a linux user since around ten years but this problem I still 
haven't had and taking the poor results I found when researching in 
mailing list archives and google, it seems that I am the first one ever 
having the following problem. It is simple but not easy to solve:

The programs "grep" and "egrep" hang whenever started. "They hang" means 
that it is not possible to kill the process ("kill -9 PID-number", and 
"killall grep" or "killall egrep" do not show any result). As a result 
more and more <defunct> processes are listed when making a "ps aux" with 
no possibility to get rid of these processes. Furthermore "grep" and 
"egrep" are tools constantly used by other components of the system. 
E.g. my backup program relies on grep, furthermore nearly every init 
script needs grep. This results in not being able to shutdown or boot 
the system, as when it comes to the first init script that is using grep 
the whole init process just stands still at that point forever.

I already tried to de- and reinstall the grep-rpm. Did not work, same 
problem. As it does not look like a hardware error for me (everything 
else beside grep is working fine) it may be that a package that is used 
by grep is corrupted. So what I would need as information:

* How can I get a list of RPMs that are needed by grep in order to 
reinstall them (as there may be a corrupted file causing this).
* Is there any possibility to have yum reinstall all RPMs of a system 
(leaving the configuration alone of course) in order to be sure that the 
problem doesn't result from a broken binary?
* Did anyone else have this problem before and knows a solution?

Thanks in advance,
Benedikt.