Re: Killing a zombie process?

[Johnny Billquist <bqt%update.uu.se@localhost>]

On 2015-09-24 13:52, Paul Goyette wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Sep 2015, Gary Duzan wrote:
>
> > In Message <Pine.NEB.4.64.1509241821230.1850%vps1.whooppee.com@localhost>,
> >   Paul Goyette <paul%vps1.whooppee.com@localhost>wrote:
> >
> > =>I'm not sure how I got to this point (but see high-level steps below).
> > =>I have this zombie process:
> > =>
> > =>root    27237  0.0  0.0       0      0 pts/2- Z          - 0:00.00 (sh)
> > =>
> > =>Various web resources say "kill the parent" and the zombie child will
> > =>die, too.  But that's probably not a good idea here, since the
> > parent is
> > =>(or at least, appears to be) init (pid==1).
> >
> >   Can you conform with "ps axl"?
>
>   UID   PID  PPID   CPU PRI NI     VSZ    RSS WCHAN   STAT TTY
> TIME COMMAND
>     0     0     0     0   0  0       0  15044 -       OKl  ?
> 1:49.02 [syste
>     0     1     0     0  85  0   13092   1336 wait    Is   ?
> 0:00.59 init
> ...
>     0 27237     1     0   0  0       0      0 -       Z    pts/2-
> 0:00.00 (sh)
>
>
> Yup, my zombie's parent PPID==1

That is really weird. init should always be reaping zombie processes, so 
that having a zombie process with init as the parent, and the process 
staying around would indicate some serious bug in either the kernel, or 
in init.

> >   If init is really its parent, check its "ps axl" output and
> > check its WCHAN. If it isn't "wait", maybe run "ktruss -p 1" to
> > get an idea of what it is doing instead of wait*() calls.
>
> See ps output above;  init's WCHAN==wait
>
> So no clue on why it's not getting around to reaping child 27237.

Looks like a bug somewhere.

	Johnny