From owner-freebsd-stable Wed Jun 12 13:30: 7 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from sage-one.net (adsl-65-71-135-138.dsl.crchtx.swbell.net [65.71.135.138]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9DD7237B413 for ; Wed, 12 Jun 2002 13:29:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sagea (sagea [192.168.0.3]) by sage-one.net (8.11.6/8.11.6) with SMTP id g5CKTUE29004; Wed, 12 Jun 2002 15:29:31 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from jackstone@sage-one.net) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.20020612152930.01044510@mail.sage-one.net> X-Sender: jackstone@mail.sage-one.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 15:29:30 -0500 To: Layder , freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG From: "Jack L. Stone" Subject: Re: Zombie processes In-Reply-To: <20020612225810.D2721-100000@cyanide.pro> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 11:00 PM 6.12.2002 +0300, Layder wrote: >Processes in my box never gone. They become zombies and their >quantity increased with time and than locks the system talking that >cannot fork process. What can I do? >My system is Celeron 500 with 64 MB RAM > Here was the advice I received a couple of weeks ago: $ ps alx | grep Z UID PID PPID CPU PRI NI VSZ RSS WCHAN STAT TT TIME COMMAND 1004 82075 6901 295 96 0 0 0 - Z+ p5 0:00.00 (sh) See the Z under STAT? That show that the process is a zombie. and what does it mean...???? It means that the process has died, but hasn't been buried yet. The trouble with zombies is that you can't kill them, because they're already dead :-) First the parent process (6901 in this example) must wait for it and collect its status. You have two choices here: 1. Ignore it, it's not holding on to too many resources. 2. Kill the parent. That may or may not be a good idea. For example, in this case, $ ps lp6901 UID PID PPID CPU PRI NI VSZ RSS WCHAN STAT TT TIME COMMAND 1004 6901 6620 127 20 0 848 102 opause S+ p5 5:42.68 observe dates This is a process I have on my machine which shows the dates around the world every 2 seconds. Sure, I can kill it and restart it, but is there any point? In this case, if I go back and look for that zombie, I'll find it's already gone: I've just caught a zombie in the stage before being buried. In other cases, and especially if the program is causing lots of zombies, you may want to stop it. Best regards, Jack L. Stone, Administrator SageOne Net http://www.sage-one.net jackstone@sage-one.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message