Re: Options to stop processes that can't be killed -9 other than reboot

[Cameron Simpson <cs@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 14Sep2011 15:45, Josh Miller <joshua@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
| On 09/14/2011 03:37 PM, Cameron Simpson wrote:
| >Then it is not a zombie. Zombies are exited processes which still have their
| >parent, but the parent has not (yet) collected their exit status.
| 
| From the 'ps' man page:
| 
| "Processes marked <defunct> are dead processes (so-called "zombies")
| that remain because their parent has not destroyed them properly.
| These processes will be destroyed by init(8) if the parent process
| exits."
| 
| In my experience, zombie processes have a parent process ID of 1
| (init) by the time I discover them.

It's not my experience, and indeed the man page you quote suggests it
should not be your experience, since process 1 _is_ init. To be a zombie
with process 1 as your parent is at best a very very transient thing,
since init collects all its children almost instantly; indeed, aside
from mediating runlevels this is init's major function.

I would really be very interested in seeing a cut/paste of a real world ps
listing showing what you describe.

It is quite possible to have processes with parent id 1, but I would
never expect them to be zombies.

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs@xxxxxxxxxx> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

Processes are like potatoes.    - NCR device driver manual

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