defunct process

[navin]

Hello,
Could some one please explain what is the quality process to find out the cause for the defunct process , what are all the process to clean it up , i do have more than considerable amount of defunct process in my one of the production server.In my experience i had these kind of situvation before ..but only reboot helped me that time. But i read that having the parent process to realize that there are number of defunct process around ...by doing hup to the ppid which will resolve the issue with out rebooting the server. Is that true.Please advice.Thanks So Much.

[Ninad_1]

Please read the following threads for an understanding

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=786301&admit=-682735245+1150654417414+28353475

and Ralph's explanation in
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=702079

Regards,
Ninad

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom navin,

Defunct processes are usually caused by bad applications. They are usually solved by patching and upgrading aforementioned applications.

You can try to kill, then kill -9 the process. If that does not work, you have no choice but to reboot the system to resolve the defunct process. These processes sometimes hold large amounts of memory and can impact system performance.

SEP

[Citibank_1]

Hi navin,

defunct process is just an entry in the process table and not a running process. they only occpy a slot in the process table no resoures are used than that.Killing defuncts makes no sense then, only killing their parent process may help to get rid of them.most of their parent may not be available.you have to check your application if you want to avoid it.

[spex]

navin,

'ipcs -ma' to see if any defunct processes are holding onto memory. Pay attention to CPID and LPID.

PCS