Removing zombie processes

[Doug_85]

Here's a script that removes zombie processes without rebooting. I received this script from a dba in california.

ps -ef|grep " 1 "|grep ?|grep -v oracle|grep -v root|grep -v acushare|grep -v lp

Thanks,
Doug

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Send that script back to California. It does nothing of the sort unless you believe that sticking your head in the sand makes the bad guys go away.

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

The script does not appear to be functional.

I'm attaching a script that does sometimes get zombie processes.

Once the zombie process has a ppid of 1, the only way to get rid of it is to boot the box.

See attachment.

SEP

[Muthukumar_5]

We can identify the process is weather zombie or not with ps or top command.

We can collect the process as,

ps -aefl | grep -v grep | awk '{ if ( $2 == "z" ) print $4 }'

where, ps with -l option is used to give the process is
O Process is running on a processor. S Sleeping: process is waiting for an event to complete
R Runnable: process is on run queue.
Z Zombie state: process terminated and parent not waiting.
T Process is stopped, either by a job control sig-nal or because it is being traced.

else top command will show the state,pid, command user details.

Use kill -9 to kill the zombie process.

[Sundar_7]

at best, the script lists you the zombie processes in the system but does nothing about it.

There is no supported way to remove the zombie processes in the system.

They are just an entry in the process table and consumes no resource whatsoever. So you can just ignore them. But if you are really concerned, then I learned there is a program distributed by interex HP-UX community.

This is the information I found. But note this is not supported by HP.

The program is called kill zomb and may be obtained by calling Interex
(the International Association of Hewlett-Packard Computer Users) at
(408) 738-4848, fax (408) 736-2156, or writing them at:

Interex
Contributed Software Library/HP-UX
585 Maude Court
Sunnyvale, CA. 94088-3439