Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2014 07:28:02 -0700 (PDT) From: "Chris H" <bsd-lists@bsdforge.com> To: "John Baldwin" <jhb@freebsd.org> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, freebsd-hackers <hackers@freebsd.org>, freebsd-stable <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org>, Chris H <bsd-lists@bsdforge.com> Subject: Re: Process handlers, and zombies, or preap(1) Message-ID: <c28e389b7ebf9a778367e7f59d018222.authenticated@ultimatedns.net> In-Reply-To: <201404010941.33741.jhb@freebsd.org> References: <26dbb84bafaf0114cb75c3fbe060d412.authenticated@ultimatedns.net> <201404010941.33741.jhb@freebsd.org>
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> On Monday, March 31, 2014 4:06:43 pm Chris H wrote: >> Greetings, >> I'm evaluating/experimenting on releng_9. The install, and now >> custom kernel have noting exotic, or anything out of the ordinary. >> top(1), and ps(1) indicate a (1) zombie, or <defunct> process. On >> my releng_8 systems, when I occasionally encounter one of these, >> they soon disappear (are reaped) from the process table. While I >> have not investigated this far enough on both versions to determine >> whether the parent process reaped the child on the releng_8 systems, >> and the parent on releng_9 is simply an irresponsible parent, eg; >> a different parent. Before I do, I was wondering if there was any >> specific difference between the 2 versions that might cause better >> handling of such situations. While I recognize that resource >> starvation is HIGHLY unlikely, except by perhaps a rouge parent >> spawning multitudes of zombies. I thought it might be useful for >> "housekeeping" to 1) provide a process table housekeeper (zombie >> reaper), or 2) create a system utility/command like SunOS/OpenSolaris >> has; preap(1). >> >> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=preap&manpath=SunOS+5.10 >> >> Thank you for your time, and consideration. > > Nothing is different with child processes in 9 vs 8. It is most > likely a misbehaving parent (or the parent is stuck or hung). Hello, John, and thank you for the reply. Right you are. Julian Elischer was kind enough to remind me that ps -alx would give me the information I needed to find the seemingly "lazy" parent process. But not before I had already (re)created a (Free)BSD version of preap(1), and cleared the entry from the proc table. However, it re-appeared again. So this time I traced it to it's parent, and now I can deal with it /properly/. It's an old port who's development was taken over by a Windows developer. So he doesn't have access to the *NIX-isms. I'll see if I can find the time to coordinate some effort(s) to clean it up, or branch a NIX version. Thank you /very/ much for addressing my original question. --Chris > > -- > John Baldwin > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hackers-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
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