I can confirm this behaviour, although I'm not so sure the problem is related to suPHP. I'd have to look at the code to see if wait() or waitpid() is being called in the parent when fork() is used.
I'm more inclined to believe the problem is with PHP itself, possibly when called as a CGI. I see some Google results which confirm this. In the case of real-life scenarios: we have a couple users who use web board scripts which do retarded things, and most of those scripts result in defunct (zombie) processes. However, those processes automatically get reaped when they exit. I have not seen them "stick around", except for the very early days when we used FreeBSD 4.x and very old PHP. Your below ps does not include parent PIDs, which would be useful, although the parent process may be httpd (which won't tell much). -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB | On Tue, May 06, 2008 at 02:05:59PM +0300, Max Korzhanoff wrote: > Hello, > > Since our first installation of suPHP 0.6.2 on Apache 2 and PHP4 we > found that from time to time php processes show themselves as defunct > (zombie), but almost every time they are successfully finished later. After > a long period of high workload there was a few hanging php defunct > processes that can be successfully killed. Now we almost completely moved > to PHP5 (it's 5.2.6 now), but "problem" still appears. > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# ps axwww | grep -i php-cgi > 25784 ? S 0:00 /usr/local/php5/bin/php-cgi > 28362 ? Z 0:00 [php-cgi] <defunct> > 28367 ? Z 0:00 [php-cgi] <defunct> > 28368 ? Z 0:00 [php-cgi] <defunct> > 28379 ? R 0:00 /usr/local/php5/bin/php-cgi > 28382 pts/1 S+ 0:00 grep -i php-cgi > [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# ps axwww | grep -i php-cgi > 25784 ? S 0:00 /usr/local/php5/bin/php-cgi > 28480 ? R 0:00 /usr/local/php5/bin/php-cgi > 28489 ? Z 0:00 [php-cgi] <defunct> > 28490 ? R 0:00 /usr/local/php5/bin/php-cgi > 28492 pts/1 S+ 0:00 grep -i php-cgi > > It's not a problem in fact, but it will be good to run suphp smooth > without zombies. > We're running Apache 2.0.61 with suPHP 0.6.3 on CentOS 4.6 Virtuozzo > VPS. > > -- > Kind regards, > Max Korzhanoff > GARM Technologies > Riga, Latvi > > begin:vcard > fn:Max Korzhanoff > n:Korzhanoff;Max > org:GARM Technologies > adr:;;Ozolciema 46/3-44;Riga;Latvia;LV-1058;Latvia > email;internet:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > title:CEO > tel;cell:+371 26402104 > x-mozilla-html:TRUE > url:http://www.garmtech.lv > version:2.1 > end:vcard > > _______________________________________________ > suPHP mailing list > suPHP@lists.marsching.biz > http://lists.marsching.com/mailman/listinfo/suphp _______________________________________________ suPHP mailing list suPHP@lists.marsching.biz http://lists.marsching.com/mailman/listinfo/suphp
