Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 22:11:52 +0100 From: Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Process handlers, and zombies, or preap(1) Message-ID: <20140331211147.GA52184@anubis.morrow.me.uk> In-Reply-To: <26dbb84bafaf0114cb75c3fbe060d412.authenticated@ultimatedns.net>
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Quoth "Chris H" <bsd-lists@bsdforge.com>: > I'm evaluating/experimenting on releng_9. The install, and now > custom kernel have noting exotic, or anything out of the ordinary. > top(1), and ps(1) indicate a (1) zombie, or <defunct> process. On > my releng_8 systems, when I occasionally encounter one of these, > they soon disappear (are reaped) from the process table. While I > have not investigated this far enough on both versions to determine > whether the parent process reaped the child on the releng_8 systems, > and the parent on releng_9 is simply an irresponsible parent, eg; > a different parent. What is the parent? > Before I do, I was wondering if there was any > specific difference between the 2 versions that might cause better > handling of such situations. While I recognize that resource > starvation is HIGHLY unlikely, except by perhaps a rouge parent A rouge parent? :) > spawning multitudes of zombies. I thought it might be useful for > "housekeeping" to 1) provide a process table housekeeper (zombie > reaper), That's called init(8). When the parent exits, init will wait for the zombie. > or 2) create a system utility/command like SunOS/OpenSolaris > has; preap(1). That seems like a bad idea, to me. Generally speaking I would expect it to be safer to kill and restart the parent, allowing init to do its job. Ben
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