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Full Discussion: Help! Zombies
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Help! Zombies Post 302860177 by Don Cragun on Saturday 5th of October 2013 01:04:25 AM
Old 10-05-2013
Quote:
Originally Posted by alister
In my post, the word "kill" does not refer to the system call nor the utility of the same name; it's merely colloquial English.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Cragun
Code:
kill 0 pid_of_zombie

will complete successfully telling you that the zombie hasn't been reaped yet.
That's not necessarily true. From POSIX :: functions :: kill:
Quote:
Existing implementations vary on the result of a kill() with pid indicating an inactive process (a terminated process that has not been waited for by its parent). Some indicate success on such a call (subject to permission checking), while others give an error of [ESRCH]. Since the definition of process lifetime in this volume of POSIX.1-2008 covers inactive processes, the [ESRCH] error as described is inappropriate in this case. In particular, this means that an application cannot have a parent process check for termination of a particular child with kill(). (Usually this is done with the null signal; this can be done reliably with waitpid().
Regards,
Alister
Historic implementations in 1988 (when the first System Interfaces volume of the POSIX standards was approved) behaved both ways. (Notably UNIX System V succeeded, and 4.3BSD returned an ESRCH error.) The standard required the System V behavior, and that was further reinforced when the 2008 edition of the standard clarified that the lifetime of a process does not end until it is reaped.

But, of course, some implementations of UNIX-like systems do not conform to the standards.
 

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kill(2) 							System Calls Manual							   kill(2)

Name
       kill - send signal to a process

Syntax
       #include <sys/types.h>
       #include <signal.h>

       kill(pid, sig)
       pid_t pid;
       int sig;

Description
       The  system  call sends the signal sig to a process specified by the process number pid.  The sig can be a signal specified in a call or it
       can be 0.  If the sig is 0, error checking is performed, but a signal is not sent.  This call can be used to check the validity of pid.

       The sending and receiving processes must have the same effective user ID, otherwise this call is  restricted  to  the  superuser  with  the
       exception of the signal SIGCONT.  The signal SIGCONT can always be sent to a child or grandchild of the current process.

       If the process number is 0, the signal is sent to all other processes in the sender's process group.

       If  the process number is negative but not -1, the signal is sent to all processes whose process-group-id is equal to the absolute value of
       the process number.

       The above two options are variants of

       If the process number is -1, and the user is the superuser, the signal is broadcast for all processes except to system  processes  and  the
       process sending the signal.

       Processes may send signals to themselves.

Environment
       System Five
       POSIX

       When  your  program  is	compiled in the System V or POSIX environment, a signal is sent if either the real or effective uid of the sending
       process matches the real or saved-set-uid (as described in ) of the receiving process. In addition, any process can use a pid  of  -1,  and
       the signal is sent to all processes subject to these permission checks.

       In POSIX mode, the pid argument is of type pid_t.

Return Values
       Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned.  Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned, and is set to indicate the error.

Diagnostics
       The system call fails under the following conditions:

       [EINVAL]       The sig is not a valid signal number.

       [EPERM]	      The  sending  process  is not the superuser, and its effective user ID does not match the effective user ID of the receiving
		      process.

       [ESRCH]	      No process can be found corresponding to that specified by pid.

See Also
       execve(2), getpgrp(2), getpid(2), killpg(2), sigvec(2), pause(3)

																	   kill(2)
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