Well, the zombie processes should be cleaned up by the operating system
when spamdyke runs the waitpid() function inside its main loop.
Obviously that function isn't being called, so spamdyke must be stuck
somewhere. The "S" in the third column indicates spamdyke is sleeping
(not looping), so it's most likely waiting on a read().
You may be able to use strace to capture the pattern of system calls
before the process becomes stuck but that would require some pretty
careful timing. A full log from one of these processes would probably
be more helpful. Your configuration file and any errors from your mail
logs could provide some clues too.
If you have gdb installed on your system, you could also recompile
spamdyke with debugging symbols and use the debugger to tell you exactly
what's going on. That would be the most helpful for fixing it. To do
that, recompile spamdyke with these commands:
./configure --with-debug
make
The resulting binary will be a little larger but it should function the
same, even in production. When a process becomes stuck, find its
process ID and start gdb, attach to the PID and ask for a stack dump:
# gdb /usr/local/bin/spamdyke
> attach PID
^C
> where
If you have any full logs, feel free to send them to me privately if you
don't want to post them on the list.
-- Sam Clippinger
Ken Schweigert wrote:
> I'm seeing this error happen quite a bit lately. I get a lot of
> defunct processes that just seem to hang around forever. Eventually I
> have to 'kill' them off manually. I'm not really sure how to debug
> it. Here is the output from "ps -axf' :
>
> 25733 ? S 0:00 /usr/local/bin/spamdyke -f
> /etc/spamdyke.conf /var/qmail/bin/qmail-smtpd
> /home/vpopmail/bin/vchkpw /bin/true
> 25763 ? Z 0:00 \_ [qmail-smtpd] <defunct>
> 13671 ? S 0:00 /usr/local/bin/spamdyke -f
> /etc/spamdyke.conf /var/qmail/bin/qmail-smtpd
> /home/vpopmail/bin/vchkpw /bin/true
> 13694 ? Z 0:00 \_ [qmail-smtpd] <defunct>
> 23023 ? S 0:00 /usr/local/bin/spamdyke -f
> /etc/spamdyke.conf /var/qmail/bin/qmail-smtpd
> /home/vpopmail/bin/vchkpw /bin/true
> 23046 ? Z 0:00 \_ [qmail-smtpd] <defunct>
> ...
>
> I'm am using spamdyke-3.1.6. This is happening on my primary and one
> of my secondary MX servers.
>
> Any idea where to start troubleshooting this? If it helps, my mail
> servers are installed as Shupp Toasters
> (http://www.shupp.org/toaster/).
>
> -ken
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