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Full Discussion: what is zombie , how to kill it ,
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers what is zombie , how to kill it , Post 302475926 by methyl on Tuesday 30th of November 2010 10:00:10 AM
Old 11-30-2010
You cannot "kill" a zombie process. They are usually cleared up automatically by unix unless they are stuck talking to some I/O device in which case only a reboot will get rid of them.

I have assumed that you know the difference between a Zombie Process and an Orphan Process. Here is a detailed explanation of a Zombie Process:

Zombie process - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As for "kill -9" it is rarely ever necessary to issue "kill -9" unless you are having trouble shutting down a sick computer. A "kill -9" ends the process uncleanly and is one of the easiest ways to silently corrupt files.
 

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LEARN ABOUT MOJAVE

kill.d

kill.d(1m)							   USER COMMANDS							kill.d(1m)

NAME

       kill.d - snoop process signals as they occur. Uses DTrace.

SYNOPSIS

       kill.d

DESCRIPTION

       kill.d is a simple DTrace program to print details of process signals as they are sent, such as the PID source and destination, signal num-
       ber and result.

       This program can be used to determine which process is sending signals to which other process.

       Since this uses DTrace, only users with root privileges can run this command.

EXAMPLES

       Default output, print process signals as they are sent.
	      # kill.d

FIELDS

       FROM   source PID

       COMMAND
	      source command name

       TO     destination PID

       SIG    destination signal ("9" for a kill -9)

       RESULT result of signal (-1 is for failure)

DOCUMENTATION

       See the DTraceToolkit for further documentation under the Docs directory. The DTraceToolkit docs may include full worked examples with ver-
       bose descriptions explaining the output.

EXIT

       kill.d will run forever until Ctrl-C is hit.

AUTHOR

       Brendan Gregg [Sydney, Australia]

SEE ALSO

       dtrace(1M), truss(1)

version 0.90							   May 14, 2005 							kill.d(1m)
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