topic Re: Killing root orphan in Operating System - HP-UX

Killing root orphan

Jeffrey F. Goldsmith — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:19:39 GMT

This morning I noticed that there were several root orphans on my HP 3440-4 w/HP-UX 11.23i server. Is there a way I can kill them without rebooting the server?

Re: Killing root orphan

Pete Randall — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:27:47 GMT

A true orphan's parent is init and the only way to kill an orphan is to kill it's parent. I really don't think you want to try killing init, though.

Pete

Re: Killing root orphan

Dennis Handly — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 03:36:46 GMT

>there were several root orphans on my HP 3440-4 w/HP-UX 11.23i server.

What do you mean by orphans? Did you mean zombies?

>Pete: A true orphan's parent is init and the only way to kill an orphan is to kill it's parent.

I think you are confusing orphans adopted by init and zombies.

Orphans adopted by init may be killed. If they don't die with kill -9, you have to reboot.
Zombies can be killed by killing the zombie master. Of course you have to judge which is worth more, the zombie master or your piece of mind? :-)

init is never a zombie master, part of it's job is to kill any adopted zombies. It's a zombie slayer.

Re: Killing root orphan

Venkatesh BL — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 04:06:03 GMT

Zombies are completed child processes waiting for their parent to read the exit status through wait() syscall.

If the parent process is anything other than init, you could try killing it. This would let the children rest in peace.

Re: Killing root orphan

Dennis Handly — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 04:53:25 GMT

>Venkatesh: If the parent process is anything other than init, you could try killing it.

Didn't I say that? ;-)
Their parent can't be init and you can't kill init anyway.

Re: Killing root orphan

Venkatesh BL — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 05:14:37 GMT

Dennis: I posted it to clarify that the "Zombie Master" here is the parent process.

Also, I think there is no harm reiterating the fact! ;)

Re: Killing root orphan

Jeffrey F. Goldsmith — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:11:05 GMT

When I do a "who" the root user shows up several times. There are a couple from February and one from November. After doing a "who -Ru" I found that they were created by me. I was having some trouble with my computer crashing back in February. I am not sure what happened back in November.

root pts/1 Feb 14 08:16 old 19697 dell37037.net1.fnsb:0.0
root pts/0 Feb 14 08:16 old 19698 dell37037.net1.fnsb:0.0

So, my question is how can I kill them without rebooting my server?

Re: Killing root orphan

Pete Randall — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:24:41 GMT

At the risk of being chastised by Dennis again -- ;^) --, what does "ps -ef |grep 19697" and ps -ef |grep 19698" return?

Pete

Re: Killing root orphan

Jeffrey F. Goldsmith — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:25:09 GMT

root: /G_sharedfiles ==> ps -ef|grep 19697
root 8694 17609 0 09:20:04 pts/tM 0:00 grep 19697
root: /G_sharedfiles ==> ps -ef|grep 19698
root 8706 17609 1 09:20:17 pts/tM 0:00 grep 19698
root: /G_sharedfiles ==>

Re: Killing root orphan

Patrick Wallek — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:43:30 GMT

Well, if those processes aren't there then they can't be killed.

It appears that your 'who' output is what is actually messed up.

Re: Killing root orphan

Dennis Handly — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 22:21:43 GMT

>Patrick: It appears that your 'who' output is what is actually messed up.

Right, it seems your wtmp files have stale entries:
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1188269
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1156946
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1149632
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1040447