Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello Experts
i'm having some trouble with a script.
the purpose is to kill all processes from a distinct tty in a HP-UX machine, given the User TTY.

it's to use like this:

killtty pts/tnb pts/tr pts/tD

here it is

#!/usr/bin/ksh
i=1
for i
do
[ ${i} ] || exit
kill -9 `ps -ft "${i}" | awk 'NR != 1 {print $2}'`
done

The problem is that it's leaving a zombie process, i don't know why.

i have adapted this script from one that Perderabo has indicated to me to kill all processes from a user given it's UserName.

Thanks for your help

A true zombie is not much of a problem. But look at the ppid field of the zombie. Do a ps "-fp n" where n is that ppid of the zombie. You will now be looking at the parent of the zombie. The zombie will persist until the parent issues a wait() system call. If the program is allowing zomblies to accumulate, it needs a fix. And you cam kill this parent process. That will reparent the zombie to init which will always wait for a dead child.

well , let's see
when i use this script, it kill's all the processes but one.
the user still appears when i use "who" and with "w" in the column "what" i have "-".using "who -u" it has a process number.
and when i try to make "ps -fu" on that number , nothing appears.
i'm a bit confused about this, so i'l try to understand this a litlle bit more. thanks Perderabo

ps -fp

sorry, i ment to write ps -fp
when i write "who -u" , this appears:

dist12 pts/tc Apr 8 17:03 0:35 8145 132.142.170.33

then i try to:

"ps -fp 8145", but nothing appears, just column headers.

even when i write "ps -u dist12", nothing appears.

When i write "w", it appears among all other users

User tty login@ idle JCPU PCPU What
dist12 pts/tc 5:03 37 -

there must be some script error ,like if the script was killing the processes in the wrong order.

Huh? What on earth does "who" have to do with anything? A zombie is a process that has terminated. You use "ps" to see processes. In "ps -el", the second field, labelled S (for state) will have a Z for any zombies. So "ps -el | grep Z" will give you a list of all of your zombies...if you actually have some.

well , i usualy use "who" to find who is logged.
when that line appears...

User tty login@ idle JCPU PCPU What
dist12 pts/tc 5:03 37 -

with that "-" in 7 column, the user isn't logged and i can't kill him any way, everything i try it's unusefull and the olny process number i can get is when i use "who -u". In this case it shows :

dist12 pts/tc Apr 8 17:03 6:42 8145 132.142.170.33

the number "8145" is the only PID that i find.

i don't know if this is a zombie, but i sure can't do anything with it.

as to knowledge about Unix or Scripting, don't be surprise about my ignorance. I only started while ago to learn.

and you have been most helpfull Perderabo
thanks for that