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[Makbeth]

So I had a dwarf go into a secretive mood and demand cut gems, fiber cloth, silk cloth, boulders, blocks, and logs.  I had at least a dozen of all those things, but for whatever reason he wasn't happy with that and went berserk. 

Now his corpse is lying in the main hallway, even though all his stuff was long ago carted off and a coffin has been claimed for him.  Forbade and reclaimed his corpse, no change.  He'll probably rise as a violent ghost soon.

Wait a second... Toady mandates that we bury bodies to avoid ghosts but gives us no way to do so on occasion.  He's a noble!

Anyway, I'm thinking I'll just atom-smash the corpse and then make a memorial slab, but for future reference, is it possible to do this properly?

[i2amroy]

If there already is a coffin that says "property of berserk dwarf's name", then there are only two problems that you could be having.
1)The coffin/corpse is inaccessible. Since you said the corpse is in the main hallway, I'm going to assume it's accessible. Check to see if your dwarves can reach the coffin. Also make sure there aren't any burrows forbidding them from reaching either object.
2)Your dwarves are all too busy to haul the corpse or they don't have the right job enabled. Make sure that you have some dwarves with the "burial" labor enabled and that they have some free time to haul the corpse. They should get around to it eventually.

[Makbeth]

It was in the main hallway where 50 dwarves walk by every minute.  It was in a burrow, but the burrow is only for ambushes and sieges, and in any case the burrow contains the entire fortress.

I had a whole bunch of idlers lounging around in the meeting hall nearby, some of which I know had hauling enabled.  In fact, his stuff was long put away before he began to rot.  Usually they take the corpse and bury that first. 

[Mr S]

Hauling and burial are not necessarily the same.  Do you have burial set for everyone too?  I don't usually, once I'm past the first couple of migration waves.  I don't want my Legendary Brewer risking his vomit soaked beard to pick up a recruit's unfortunate carcass after a seige, just in case there's till an ambush lying in wait.

[Makbeth]

I appreciate you volunteering your time to try to help here, but obvious answers will only waste your time because I try the obvious and search the wiki before posting my questions here.

This is not a problem with a supply of idle dwarves or labors being checked; this is a problem with the dwarves not recognizing a berserker corpse as one of their own.  The solutions posted so far are the first things I checked when I encountered this bug, and I posted here because none of them worked and I was curious if someone's found a simpler workaround than I did.  It's a moot point now though because as soon as I destroyed the corpse using DFhack, the engrave slab interface showed him as entombed.  If he rises as a ghost then I'll just engrave and build a slab.

[i2amroy]

It's always possible you ran into some other weird bug then.

As for the obvious answers, you would be surprised at how few people actually check the easy answers or claim that they have checked all of the easy answers when they really have missed something stupid like a locked door. I find It's always best to ask the easy questions and give the easy answers first regardless of who is asking the question, because maybe 80% of the time the easy answers will solve the problem.

[Finn]

I appreciate you volunteering your time to try to help here, but obvious answers will only waste your time because I try the obvious and search the wiki before posting my questions here.

 The solutions posted so far are the first things I checked when I encountered this bug, and I posted here because none of them worked and I was curious if someone's found a simpler workaround than I did.

...and how are we supposed to know any of this, is it in your op anywhere?  People miss "obvious" stuff in this game all the time, it accounts for probably more than 90% of the problems encountered.  Unless you tell us the obvious things you've tried it isn't fair to become frustrated when people suggest them.

Edit:  oops, should have read i2amroy's second paragraph.

[Makbeth]

...and how are we supposed to know any of this, is it in your op anywhere? 

...Yes, yes it is.  All of it is either stated outright or implied.

"Hauling" is not an individual labor setting.  It's a category, and it includes burial.  If I say hauling is enabled, that implies that burial is enabled. 

As for suggesting that I make sure the corpse is accessible after I said it's in the main hallway, well, I'm not sure what I can say to that.  One would think that my main hallway is accessible to somebody, burrow restrictions or not.  I know it's a bad habit to get insulted when people tell you things they should know you already know, but making sure my main hallway is accessible?  My patience doesn't always stretch that far.  Besides, I stated that all his stuff was long ago carted off, so obviously it's accessible.  That also means there's enough dwarves around to take his corpse, so the number of idlers is not a problem.

If sounded frustrated, it's precisely because although people certainly read my OP, their advice disregards it so much that they may as well not have.

[Andrew425]

As far as I know, a berserk corpse will be placed in a refuse pile.

Did you have an available one?

[Makbeth]

Yes.  Strange then that he had a coffin set aside.  Maybe there was some conflict as to where he should go.

[xpi0t0s]

>>If sounded frustrated, it's precisely because although people certainly read my OP, their advice disregards it so much that they may as well not have.

Why not post a savegame, then we can find out exactly what the problem is?
There are enough of us around for one of us to be able to figure it out.
We'll probably need to know exactly which version of DF you're using.