From owner-freebsd-hackers  Mon Dec  8 16:49:17 1997
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From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
Message-Id: <199712090048.RAA23471@usr01.primenet.com>
Subject: Re: dealing with zombies
To: atrens@nortel.ca (Andrew Atrens)
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1997 00:48:16 +0000 (GMT)
Cc: hackers@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199712082025.MAA07048@hub.freebsd.org> from "Andrew Atrens" at Dec 8, 97 01:37:00 pm
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> Hi All,
> 
> I'm eval'ing Wordperfect-7.0-for-Linux on `FreeBSD 3.0-971012-SNAP'  and am
> seeing lots of zombies:

[ ... ]

> 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? )

You should find out if this happens in Linux, too.

If it does, then you need to live with it.

If it doesn't, then the problem is in the default for SIGCHLD.  If
the parent ignores SIGCHLD (maybe the default on Linux?), then
children should be automatically reaped instead of needing to have
their status reaped by a parent.  This would be a bug in the Linux
emulation code.


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.