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Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 17:48:23 +1100
From: Peter Jeremy <PeterJeremy@optushome.com.au>
To: Rob Lahaye <lahaye@snu.ac.kr>
Message-ID: <20050119064822.GA65506@cirb503493.alcatel.com.au>
References: <41EDA6FB.6000706@snu.ac.kr>
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cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: User's cron job creates zombie process on 5.3
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On Wed, 2005-Jan-19 09:16:59 +0900, Rob Lahaye wrote:
>  tunnel="-L 55110:localhost:110 pop3.univ.net"
>  tunnel_up=`pgrep -f -- "${tunnel}"`
>  [ "${tunnel_up}" = "" ] && /usr/bin/ssh -N -f ${tunnel}

>It works beautifully, but why does this also generate one zombie process:
> USER  PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS  TT  STAT STARTED      TIME COMMAND
> rob   655  0.0  0.0     0    0  ??  Z    Sat02PM   0:00.01 <defunct>

You get a zombie when a process has exited and the parent hasn't issued
a wait(2) (or SIG_IGN'd SIGCHLD).  Have a look at what the parent process
is and that might give you an idea as to what is going wrong.

-- 
Peter Jeremy