True. But a Zombie process which is also hung on I/O may never go away without a reboot. I have seen this with failed hardware monitoring software.
Anybody got an example to post?
It is important that we do not confuse Orphan processes (where the parent has failed) with a Zombie processes.
Finding Zombie processes depends on what version of "ps" your have.
For example:
This piece of code is crude and dangerous (and it doesn't work):
Quote:
3. Do this command to find the parent ID that relates to the zombie and then kill it:
# ps aux -eo ppid| grep <Zombie Process ID>
# kill -9 <PPID>
Use the "ps -p" switch to look up the parent process ID.
Then look carefully at the process before considering killing the process using the correct kill signal for that process (which is unlikely to be "-9"). Also do not kill init (PID 1).
One way to cause Zombie processes and other horrors is indiscriminate use of "kill -9".
My daemon process is the child of init and init has the responsibility to remove it, once it turns zombie. But I want to ask why the daemon process which is child of init turns zombie in the first place. What measures I have to take to avoid this?
rish (1 Reply)
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)
Hi
I need help because I don't know if it is possible to add a find inside a cat.
like I have a file with the pid of the process that use to became zombie. And I have the same pid stored in the var (pid1)
now, I have no clue how to check if the the find finds the pid or even if it's... (2 Replies)
dear friends,
in an interview they asked me what is zombie process. how we can identifying these process.if can you kill all zombie process. (8 Replies)
Is there an equivilant to the preap command in AIX that would allow me to get rid of a zombie process. I am new to AIX, moving over from Solaris and in the past I have been able to preap the pid on the defunct process to clean them up. I have looked around and the best I can see is that it may... (3 Replies)
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)
What is the overhead associated with zombie process?Is it running out of process-ID?:confused:
Since some information is stored in process table..
Thanks in Advance (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: jois
4 Replies
LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN
kill
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)