Comment #23 on issue 23778 by Robert.Bradbury: Chrome fails to collect  
defunct/zombie processes remaining from closed tabs/windows.
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=23778

Ok, that is useful information.  Let us assume that Google and most other  
users are
using "packaged" Linux distributions in a static state (Redhat, Ubuntu,  
etc.).  I on
the other hand am using Gentoo and have enabled upgrades to the cutting  
edge (which
may be problematic).  I know for example that I recently uninstalled the  
gnome-
keyring manager (which has some involvement in interprocess  
communication/locking)
because it has been replaced by an alternate gnome utility.  Let us also  
assume that
I am comfortable with debugging (having written C compilers and  
debuggers).  Let us
frame this from the perspective that I have downloaded the Chrome source  
(6+ weeks
ago) but am reluctant to get involved in attempting to debug it having had  
experience
with this in firefox -- having been IMO a contributor to the "window  
unexpectedly
destroyed" bug (likely a firefox problem) and the XID reuse bug (likely a  
GTK
problem).  The primary problem is not so much compiling the source in debug  
mode and
debugging it but knowing such things as where to set breakpoints in 35MB of  
binary
source code.  I wrote code to go through all of the firefox source and find  
all of
the system calls (information which the firefox developers fail to provide)  
but even
that is only of marginal help if one does not know the context in which  
those system
calls are made (i.e. what is the upper level function ultimately making a  
system call
and what is it trying to do -- this is a specification/documentation  
problem).

So lets assume the comment #17 from codenamed004 is valid, then it is not a  
problem
specific to my install (though it would be nice to know what versions of  
Gnome &
associated critical processes he was running).  Lets also assume that the  
XPCOM
errors give us a strong hint as to what is going wrong -- the dying process  
is
attempting to tell the top level process to collect it but can't get to  
it.  Then I
would like the chrome developers to provide two specific pieces of  
information.  What
module is issuing the XPCOM errors (and what in their opinion may be  
causing it) and
what module is supposed to be issuing the wait/waitpid calls that collect  
exiting
children from the master process.  That's it -- 2 filenames.  And if one is  
feeling
generous a list of the files that fork() -- or more importantly invoke the  
low level
routines that do the fork()s when opening a window/tab [or start something  
at the
behest of a plugin or Javascript].

If you cannot provide this information to people who might potentially  
contribute
then you are locked into a situation where there are only a limited number  
of people
who can contribute and due to their particular hardware/software instances  
may not be
able to contribute very much.

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