From: barry@citr.uq.oz.au (Barry Kitson) Subject: Re: Zombies are very nasty little buggers Date: 1 Dec 1992 00:49:16 GMT
sprave@gonzo.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Joachim Sprave) writes:
>In article <168AF8D42.HIPKR@ibm.rz.tu-clausthal.de>,
>HIPKR@ibm.rz.tu-clausthal.de (P.Kruse) writes:
>[...]
>|> You can kill the zombies with 'kill -9 <pid>' where pid means
>|> the process-id reported from the ps.
>|>
>|> If that doesn't work, try to debug not under root.
>|> If it's possible, add a new user and use this new user for
>|> developing software.
>[...]
>I don't know how Linux handles processes which are waiting
>for unreachable devices like printers out of paper or something
>like that. In most unices they will get a kill signal just
>when they are awaken, what *never* will happen.
>That's why they are called zombies: they exist, but they
>can't be killed.
They are child processes waiting to die, but can't inform
the parent that they're about to do so because the parent isn't
listening. To kill the zombies (on most UNIX-like OSs), find out
what the parent is (with ps -l) and kill it. With any luck, the
zombie will be inherited by init, and will then be able to die a
quick death.
If this fails, try the big red button on the back of your
box :^)
Barry.