On Wednesday 03 Mar 2004 7:47 am, Raffaele Belardi wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > How do I kill zombie processes? When I run TOP it shows that there
> > are 2 zombie processes, but I don't know how to determine their
> > PID, so I don't know how to kill them.
> >
> > I'm figuring that a zombie is a process which has crashed. Right?
> >
> > Thanks.
> From man ps:
>
> "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"
Zombie processes are processes that have exited, but whose parent
process hasn't got around to cleaning up. Therefore it is more likely
that the parent process has crashed. To find the parent process use the
command:
ps axgl
The PPID is the PID of the parent. The PID is the PID of the process.
Search the list for the zombies (status Z), note their PPID, then
search the list for the process with that PID.
When a process dies any child processes it still has are adopted by the
init process (PID 1). Init spends all it's time waiting for child
processes, so zombies will be quickly tidied up.
If the parent has hung you probably want to terminate it with extreme
prejudice, so kill -KILL the parent process and the zombies will go
away. That's (as root):
kill -KILL [PID of parent]
--
Richard Urwin
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