Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 23:28:23 -0500 From: "Jack L. Stone" <jackstone@sage-one.net> To: "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog@FreeBSD.org> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: What Zombie? Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.20020530232823.01c49f08@mail.sage-one.net> In-Reply-To: <20020531134804.D6654@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <3.0.5.32.20020530223305.01c537a8@mail.sage-one.net> <3.0.5.32.20020530223305.01c537a8@mail.sage-one.net>
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At 01:48 PM 5.31.2002 +0930, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: >On Thursday, 30 May 2002 at 22:33:05 -0500, Jack L. Stone wrote: >> 4.5-RELEASE >> >> I just ran dd on two 40GB to backup the main HD-1 to HD-2. While running >> top to watch the dd, I noticed a "zombie" appeared listed at the summary in >> of processes. Got 54 processes, 1 running and that 1 zombie. Never seen it >> before. How can I find that zombie > > $ ps alx | grep Z > UID PID PPID CPU PRI NI VSZ RSS WCHAN STAT TT TIME COMMAND > 1004 82075 6901 295 96 0 0 0 - Z+ p5 0:00.00 (sh) > >See the Z under STAT? That show that the process is a zombie. > >> and what does it mean...???? > >It means that the process has died, but hasn't been buried yet. The >trouble with zombies is that you can't kill them, because they're >already dead :-) First the parent process (6901 in this example) must >wait for it and collect its status. > >You have two choices here: > >1. Ignore it, it's not holding on to too many resources. >2. Kill the parent. That may or may not be a good idea. For > example, in this case, > > $ ps lp6901 > UID PID PPID CPU PRI NI VSZ RSS WCHAN STAT TT TIME COMMAND > 1004 6901 6620 127 20 0 848 102 opause S+ p5 5:42.68 observe dates > > This is a process I have on my machine which shows the dates > around the world every 2 seconds. Sure, I can kill it and restart > it, but is there any point? In this case, if I go back and look > for that zombie, I'll find it's already gone: I've just caught a > zombie in the stage before being buried. In other cases, and > especially if the program is causing lots of zombies, you may want > to stop it. > >Greg >-- Thanks, Greg: I tried running ps and a few others to look for the process but did not find it. Then I realized I still had HD-2 mounted (/mnt/drv2) when I ran dd from HD-1 for the first time. Forgot to umount it and could not either using "umount /dev/drv2". So, since was leaving the server unattended, decided to reboot. That killed the zombie (which was already dead I guess). Any zombie connection with the dd while still mounted? ...and does that impair my dd in any way....??? Thanks for any follow-up.... .... our website: http://www.sage-one.net/ Best regards, Jack L. Stone Server Admin To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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