From: mfuhr@cwis.unomaha.edu (Michael Fuhr) Subject: Why then... (was Re: Zombie processes, and what to do about them...) Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 17:26:45 GMT
jbii@HDFS1.acd.com ( John O. Bell II ) writes:
>This is the straight skinny on zombie processes (much thanks to the article
>in the March 1993 issue of UNIXWORLD, written by Ray Swartz):
[some text omitted]
> A child's exit status is returned to its parent process only if the
>parent process waits for it by executing a wait(2) system call. When a
>child's exit status is reported to its parent, the child's process table
>entry is removed.
> If the parent never calls a wait(), the zombie child stays in the process
>table until the parent process terminates. When a process terminates, all of
>that processes' children are inherited by the init process. When a zombie
>is inherited by init, it is removed from the process table.
I wonder if init (0.99pl4) is negligent in its duties - I currently have
3 zombies, all orphaned and inherited by init. My process table has become
full more than once; all I could do was reboot.