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zombie process

 
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Shivkumar
Super Advisor

zombie process

Hi,

I observed a defuct (zombie) process.
$ ps -ef|grep defunct
root 27565 27437 234 Jun 14 ttypa 31788:23
sksonkar 26774 26050 0 21:42:59 ttyp7 0:00 grep defunct

How to find out which application or program caused this zombie process ?

Is there a way to kill this process ?

Thanks,
Shiv
19 REPLIES 19
A. Clay Stephenson
Acclaimed Contributor

Re: zombie process

At this point, the only resource the process is consuming is a slot in the kernel's process table. You have one clue and that is the PPID (parent PID) so you might try a ps -p 27437 -f to see if this parent process still exists.
If it ain't broke, I can fix that.
Victor Fridyev
Honored Contributor

Re: zombie process

Hi,

It does not look like a zombie, I hope you can kill it.
In order to see its parent look at PID=27437 and its parents.

HTH
Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity - RTFM
Arunvijai_4
Honored Contributor

Re: zombie process

Hi Shiv,

You have the PPID, its easy to find the root cause. Use, # ps -p

-Arun
"A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for"
Shivkumar
Super Advisor

Re: zombie process

Here is the output:

$ ps -p 27437 -f
UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME COMMAND
root 27437 27402 0 Jun 14 ttypa 0:00 ksh
$

Is there any clue with this output ?

Thanks,
Shiv
Victor Fridyev
Honored Contributor

Re: zombie process

Hi,

I'd like to see parents of PID=27402, but it looks like you have a login session on /dev/ttypa and the defunct process has been ran from it.
Did you try to kill it from the parent session ? What about kill -9 ?



HTH
Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity - RTFM
A. Clay Stephenson
Acclaimed Contributor

Re: zombie process

Try to kill the parent process. It's a bit unusual having a shell session open for nearly a month. I suspect all that killing the parent is going to do is change the PPID of the parent to 1 (init).
If it ain't broke, I can fix that.
Shivkumar
Super Advisor

Re: zombie process

I tried to kill parent process but is not getting killed. Also its ppid did not get converted to 1. BTW, i heard zombie process is a process whose parent dies before the child. But i am not able to understand how the parent process is alive in this case ?

Thanks,
Shiv
Patrick Wallek
Honored Contributor

Re: zombie process

It is possible that this process (27565) was started by ANOTHER process whose parent was the '-ksh' process. Thus, when the original parent of this process died, it inherited the '-ksh' process as its parent.
Shivkumar
Super Advisor

Re: zombie process

Appreciate more thoughts of HPUX gurus :-))

best regards,
Shiv