UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I have a strange (for me) problem here:

I use stop command to close program. After that I try to start it again. However, it wont start because one of the needed component fails to start. That is caused propably because the failing component is still running (obviously as a ghost pid). Now Im asking is there any way to terminate these kind of "floating" processes?

Thanks for your reply,

Mayby I should clarify the situation:

So when I close the program (which has 5 child processes) everything seems to be ok. But when I try to start it again, it says one of the five child processes is already running and won't start. So what I'm looking for, is a way to make sure all child processes are closed when the parent is closed. Now I have to manually close that one running "ghost/zombie or running process"

I don't mean someone have to do this for me (but I don't mind if someone wants to ) but I'd like to have some tips where to start to struggle this problem.

i have came to this irritational situation before. Its quite troublesome getting this zombies. Till i managed to write a script and place it in my .logout for which it will clear all the zombie process automatically.

Code:

#!/bin/csh

ps -ef |grep defunct |grep -v grep > /tmp/zom
cat /tmp/zom | awk '{print $2 " " $3}' > /tmp/zom.pid
foreach d (`cat /tmp/zom.pid`)
kill -9 $d
end

For your information defunct is the died process. Each dead process is been marked as defunct by the kernel which will be listed as Zombie process if you do a top.

Thanks once again for your replies, especially you killerserv That script is something like I was looking for.