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Date: Mon, 8 Dec 1997 12:44:26 -0800 (PST)
From: "J. Weatherbee - Senior Systems Architect" <jamil@acroal.com>
To: Andrew Atrens <atrens@nortel.ca>
cc: hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: dealing with zombies
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As I recall under linux setting up a signal handler that excutes waitpid()
is not necessary if you are set (by default) to ignore SIGCHLD.



On 8 Dec 1997, Andrew Atrens wrote:

> 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.
> 
>