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Help! Zombies

 
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# 15  
Old 10-04-2013
Quote:
Originally Posted by alister
You can't kill that which is already dead.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Cragun
Actually, you can kill zombies; they just won't notice that they've been killed (again).
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
This User Gave Thanks to alister For This Post:
CarloM
# 16  
Old 10-04-2013
Quote:
Originally Posted by blackrageous
Contrary to popular belief you can't always kill a zombie.
true! it keeps respawning.. the process / path is listed below, and it looks like a management process, i can't do a kill -9,,, suggestions? thanks
# 17  
Old 10-04-2013
Quote:
Originally Posted by olyanderson
true! it keeps respawning..
The process respawning has nothing to do with it being a zombie.

If you read some of the links in the search I posted earlier then you'll see it appears to be expected behaviour for ia64_corehw to have at least 1 zombie hanging around all the time.

Why do you need to get rid of the zombie? If there's only 1 at any one time it's not affecting anything.
# 18  
Old 10-04-2013
Quote:
Originally Posted by olyanderson
i can't do a kill -9,,, suggestions?
As has already been mentioned several times by several members, a zombie is already dead. There's nothing more you can do to it.

If there are only a few of them, I suggest you ignore them. If there are a lot of them, then the the parent of these zombies needs to be debugged so that it either properly wait()s on its children or ignores SIGCHLD.

jim_mcnamara illustrated the zombie cycle in his most recent post in this thread.

Regards,
Alister
Last edited by alister; 10-04-2013 at 01:37 PM..
# 19  
Old 10-04-2013
ok, i am convinced with all the input you have ALL given me. thanks for your time, i will consider this issue - not even worth the headache anymore lol..... have a good day all :0)

pete aka olynaderson
# 20  
Old 10-04-2013
what problem are you trying so solve?
# 21  
Old 10-04-2013
Quote:
Originally Posted by blackrageous
what problem are you trying so solve?
oh sorry, i am saying this issue has been resolved. im done Smilie i was thanking all those who responded.

maybe next time Smilie
 
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