From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Dec 8 12:25:40 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id MAA07061 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 8 Dec 1997 12:25:40 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers) Received: from bcarsde4.nortel.ca (mailgate.nortel.ca [192.58.194.74]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id MAA07048 for ; Mon, 8 Dec 1997 12:25:31 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from atrens@nortel.ca) Message-Id: <199712082025.MAA07048@hub.freebsd.org> Received: from bcars520.ca.nortel.com by bcarsde4.localhost; Mon, 8 Dec 1997 13:38:52 -0500 Received: from bnr.ca by bcars520.bnr.ca id <29717-0@bcars520.bnr.ca>; Mon, 8 Dec 1997 13:37:28 -0500 Date: 08 Dec 1997 13:37 EST To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG From: "Andrew Atrens" Subject: dealing with zombies Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Hi All, I'm eval'ing Wordperfect-7.0-for-Linux on `FreeBSD 3.0-971012-SNAP' and am seeing lots of zombies: 1446 ?? Z 0:00.00 (xwpthes) 1460 ?? Z 0:00.00 (xwpgmk5) 1461 ?? Z 0:00.00 (xwpspell) 1462 ?? Z 0:00.00 (xwpspell) 1467 ?? Z 0:00.00 (wpp7) 1471 ?? Z 0:00.00 (xwpspell) 1472 ?? Z 0:00.00 (xwpspell) 1473 ?? Z 0:00.00 (xwpspell) 1513 ?? Z 0:00.00 (xwpthes) 1514 ?? Z 0:00.00 (xwpthes) 1531 ?? Z 0:00.00 (xwpthes) 1532 ?? Z 0:00.00 (xwpthes) 1533 ?? Z 0:00.00 (xwpthes) 1543 ?? Z 0:00.00 (xwpthes) 1551 ?? Z 0:00.00 (xwpthes) As I understand, the root cause is that (xwp) is failing to reap dead children. However, the children *do* get reaped when I exit xwp... it seems that as long as xwp is running, no reaping is done, and the zombies accumulate...:( What I'm wondering is: i. Is this a fault/feature of the app (xwp), the linux emulation code, or the kernel (in a larger sense), and ii. are there any *good* workarounds. ( I seem to recall some discussion about a tunable kernel parm for auto-reap or some such thing? ) Cheers, Andrew.