process control

[uadm26]

Hi,

There's any way to control number of system and CPU seconds the process has consumed? I have processes that enter into zombie stat, that processes have more then 150 hours, and are consuming a lot of system resources.

Thanks.

[Stephen Keane]

man nice

[uadm26]

Hi,
But what i need, is to prevent that processes enter in zombie mode.
Thanks.

[RikTytgat]

Zombie processes do not use any resources, except for an entry in the process table. Actually, zombie processes have already exited, but their parent did not wait (correctly) for them to return.

So maybe the process used a lot of CPU, but that certainly was before it became a zombie.

See also: man 2 wait

Regards,
Rik

[RikTytgat]

When the parent process of the zombies exits (or is killed) the zombie processes will disappear.

Regards,
Rik

[uadm26]

Hi,

So the only way to audit the processes is making a script that use top to get the processes that using more resources and that are running in about a few days. That's it?

Thanks.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Some flavors of UNIX do have a kernel tunable to limit the maximum amount of CPU time a process can have -- it is a global setting. In every environment except those that are student related, the tunable is always set to unlimited because UNIX daemons might normally run for years. By definition, zombie processes are consuming no CPU resources. The real answer is to fix the problem rather than throwing a Band-Aid on it. If you have runaway processes, you need to eliminate the source of the problem.