On Sat, 19 Jan 2002 12:37:26 -0800 "Eric G. Miller" <egm2@jps.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Jan 2002 13:52:25 -0500, dman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Sat, Jan 19, 2002 at 08:15:49AM +0800, csj wrote: > > | On Thu, 17 Jan 2002 19:42:40 -0600 > > | Nori Heikkinen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > | > > | > on Thu, 17 Jan 2002 11:33:25PM +0200, Ian Balchin insinuated: [...] > > | How do I terminate the living dead? > > | > > | alpha:~# ps -A | grep defunct > > | 31080 ? 00:00:00 gpg <defunct> > > | 31081 ? 00:00:00 gpg <defunct> > > | alpha:~# kill -9 31080 > > | alpha:~# ps -A | grep defunct > > | 31080 ? 00:00:00 gpg <defunct> > > | 31081 ? 00:00:00 gpg <defunct> > > | > > | And here's top's top: > > | > > | 08:11:45 up 5 days, 17:10, 6 users, load average: 0.07, 0.03, 0.00 > > | 94 processes: 91 sleeping, 1 running, 2 zombie, 0 stopped > > > > Those processes are blocked on IO or something. Thus it is the > > _kernel_ itself that is stuck, which is why SIGKILL has no effect. > > When a process is executing in its own space, the kernel can kill it > > and clean up the pieces. When the process is executing inside the > > kernel (in a system call) then the kernel can't blow it away because > > it would then need to somehow put itself back together. > > I believe those are zombies of one or more forked processes. They're > kept around so the parent can do a waitpid() on them. Other than > a PID, they shouldn't be taking up any memory or other resources. > Sylpheed is notorious for creating gpg zombies.... They'll dissappear > when the parent exits. Yep, I'm using Sylpheed. Are you a mind reader or did you just read my X-Mailer line? And your diagnosis in this instance is probably correct. I lost the zombies when I did a ps after stopping X. But my question is more hypothetical than practical. To sum up this discussion: zombies can be killed, but only if you know their mothers. Is this correct? Kill the parent process and the zombies go away?
