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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KILL(1) User Commands KILL(1)
NAME
kill - send a signal to a process
SYNOPSIS
kill [options] <pid> [...]
DESCRIPTION
The default signal for kill is TERM. Use -l or -L to list available signals. Particularly useful signals include HUP, INT, KILL, STOP,
CONT, and 0. Alternate signals may be specified in three ways: -9, -SIGKILL or -KILL. Negative PID values may be used to choose whole
process groups; see the PGID column in ps command output. A PID of -1 is special; it indicates all processes except the kill process
itself and init.
OPTIONS
<pid> [...]
Send signal to every <pid> listed.
-<signal>
-s <signal>
--signal <signal>
Specify the signal to be sent. The signal can be specified by using name or number. The behavior of signals is explained in sig-
nal(7) manual page.
-l, --list [signal]
List signal names. This option has optional argument, which will convert signal number to signal name, or other way round.
-L, --table
List signal names in a nice table.
NOTES Your shell (command line interpreter) may have a built-in kill command. You may need to run the command described here as /bin/kill
to solve the conflict.
EXAMPLES
kill -9 -1
Kill all processes you can kill.
kill -l 11
Translate number 11 into a signal name.
kill -L
List the available signal choices in a nice table.
kill 123 543 2341 3453
Send the default signal, SIGTERM, to all those processes.
SEE ALSO
kill(2), killall(1), nice(1), pkill(1), renice(1), signal(7), skill(1)
STANDARDS
This command meets appropriate standards. The -L flag is Linux-specific.
AUTHOR
Albert Cahalan <albert@users.sf.net> wrote kill in 1999 to replace a bsdutils one that was not standards compliant. The util-linux one
might also work correctly.
REPORTING BUGS
Please send bug reports to <procps@freelists.org>
procps-ng October 2011 KILL(1)