On Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:03:52 +1000 Sebastian Spiess <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> hi all, > > for quite a while now I've been having one or sometimes 2 zombie processes > showing in my system monitor > > I tried to kill them using the system monitor. I tried killall and PID but > everything I tried did not work. You can't kill a zombie process - that's why they are called "zombies" :) > After reboot the zombie is back. > > PID is always >6000 if that matters. It is probably a misbehaving program that doesn't clean up after itself correctly. Zombie processes are inherited by "init" (PID 1), but it would be more useful for you to see which program is doing this. For example, you could run ps auxw | grep <PID number here> or grep for "Z" (capital Z is what shows up in the process table). If this is reappearing on reboot you have a buggy program... the parent process (whatever it is) is leaving its children behind. Bad parent :) > How can I investigate what causes this zombie and how can I kill it. See above. You *cannot kill a zombie*, by definition. That said, a zombie does no harm, since it uses no resources except what is required to exist in the process list. You would need a huge army ( a horde?) of zombies before there would be any impact on system performance. "Why You Can't Kill a Zombie Process" http://www.unix.com.ua/orelly/unix/upt/ch38_16.htm > I would prefer the shot gun which worked well on zombies in some games but > here in my system probably not :-) Garlic and silver bullets, waving crosses etc. don't work on zombies? *grin* -- Peter Garrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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