Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 02:06:38 -0800 (PST) From: spam maps <spamrefuse@yahoo.com> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: User's cron job creates zombie process on 5.3 Message-ID: <20050120100638.88174.qmail@web54002.mail.yahoo.com>
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Peter Jeremy wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-Jan-19 21:14:26 -0800, spam maps wrote:
>
>>> ( /usr/bin/ssh -n -f ${tunnel} & )
>>
>>Alas, no success. Still get the <defunct> zombie
>>process.
>>
>>I actually wonder if this is an odd or buggy
>>behaviour of ssh, or is cron making a mistake here?
>
>
> The cron daemon (which will have a PPID of 1) forks
> a copy of itself to actually handle the cron job
> (I suspect this is the parent of the zombie that
> you are seeing). This child process runs
> "/bin/sh -c CRONJOB" (where CRONJOB is the line in
> your crontab) and I suspect this is the zombie you
> are seeing.
>
> My guess is that your ssh process is holding open
> file descriptors and the cron child process is
> waiting for these descriptors to close before
> wait()ing for the child. If this is true, then you
> should avoid it with something like:
> ( /usr/bin/ssh -n -f ${tunnel} >/dev/null 2>&1 & )
>
BINGO!
That works. Zombie has gone. Thank you.
>>Leaving a zombie process around, means there's a
kind
>>of bug/mistake somewhere, right?
>
> Yes. But it's not necessarily a bug in FreeBSD :-).
So, after you've given me a complicated solution to
avoid the zombie, can you tell which program is at
error here? Cron, ssh, or FreeBSD?
Rob.
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