Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2000 09:19:21 +0100 (CET) From: Oliver Fromme <olli@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Killing Zombies. Message-ID: <200001020819.JAA29401@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de> In-Reply-To: <84mqle$1qdi$1@atlantis.rz.tu-clausthal.de>
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Zapper@foxchat.net wrote in list.freebsd-questions:
> How does one kill a "zombie" process?
You cannot kill it, because it's not really a "process"
anymore, so there is nothing that can receive any signals.
It's merely a slot in the process table that is kept because
its parent process hasn't grabbed the exit status of the
child. As soon as the parent checks the exit status, the
slot will be gone and recycled, thus the "zombie process"
will disappear. To enforce this, you can kill the parent
process (``ps'' will tell you what PID it is).
This is usually caused by badly written programs, but it
doesn't have any ill effects, normally. The "zombie pro-
cesses" don't occupy any resources, neither RAM nor CPU
time. Although it _might_ become a problem if you have
really a lot of them (thousands) because they can fill up
your process table.
Regards
Oliver
--
Oliver Fromme, Leibnizstr. 18/61, 38678 Clausthal, Germany
(Info: finger userinfo:olli@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de)
"In jedem Stück Kohle wartet ein Diamant auf seine Geburt"
(Terry Pratchett)
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