11-30-2010
methyl is right on about kill -9.
zombies use no resources except one - they use a process entry slot. Unless you have really large numbers of zombies that is usually not a problem.
zombies are caused by the parent process doing something stupid, namely not wait - ing on a child process. This can often be caused by blocking SIGCHLD with SIG_IGN. In that case the only way for the zombie to go away is when the parent exits, and init adopts the zombies. One of init primary jobs is to wait for parentless processes, adopt the zombie process and then wait for the zombie so it can leave and go to heaven.
I personally think people's aversion to zombies has more to do with the movies and popular culture and very little to do with what they do to unix boxes. It's all in the name.
10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting
1. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers
When you run a ps -ef and if the status is a Z (zombie) does that mean the same as not responding? (Like a windows machine).
Also has anyone here heard of the program called 'top' (I've found it on our Solaris 7 machines) If you have you might be able to help me. I need to know if there is a... (8 Replies)
Discussion started by: merlin
8 Replies
2. UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users
I would like to create a zombie process so that I can test monitoring software functionality. Any techniques? (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: swhitney
2 Replies
3. UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users
Hi All,
I am unable to kill a process using kill command. I am using HP-UX system. I have tried with kill -9 and i have root privilages.
How can i terminate this daemon ? ? ?
Regards,
Vijay Hegde (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: VijayHegde
3 Replies
4. Linux
Hi
What is the command to find only the zombie processes??
How to write the code in C to fetch the no. of zombie processes??
Thanx (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: jeenat
5 Replies
5. Linux
I have RHES4 machine with VRTSralus - Backup Exec agent installed there and running as a service. The agent hiccups sometimes and turns into defunct state. The problem is that I cannot kill it anyway., it stays there forever until the machine is rebooted. I wonder if anyone had such an experience... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: will_mike
1 Replies
6. Solaris
Dear Bos,
I have one server,everday if I check with command TOP always present zombie,like below:
last pid: 4578; load averages: 0.15, 0.11, 0.13 07:56:15
298 processes: 295 sleeping, 1... (10 Replies)
Discussion started by: fredginting
10 Replies
7. Red Hat
Hi,
Linux redhat 5.5
top shows that i have 20 zombie process :
Tasks: 357 total, 1 running, 336 sleeping, 0 stopped, 20 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.2%us, 0.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.5%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 24949400k total, 2363052k used, 22586348k free, 227084k buffers... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: yoavbe
1 Replies
8. Programming
hello all,
when we are creating a process by using fork, if the child process terminates before parent, the child process exists as zombie.. My doubt is when that child process terminates, how come that process exists further and show as a zombie process..can anyone help me to clear about this? (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: aarathy
1 Replies
9. Shell Programming and Scripting
:)how do we list zombie processes in unix server??? :confused: (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: nikhil jain
3 Replies
10. Shell Programming and Scripting
Good afternoon
I need to KILL a process in a single command sentence, for example:
kill -9 `ps -aef | grep 'CAL255.4ge' | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'`
That sentence Kills the process ID corresponding to the program CAL255.4ge.
However it is possible that the same program... (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: enriquegm82
6 Replies
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)