Bug#135504: Bug reproduced

[Phil Blundell <pb@nexus.co.uk>]

On Sun, 2002-03-03 at 23:17, Eduard Bloch wrote:
> I was able to reproduce this bug while hacking at the new cdrom
> auto-detection functions. It is simple: use bf2.4 flavor and try to
> install kernel&modules twice. Then you can see a [loop0] _Zombie_
> process, which apparently locks the file which has been mounted
> previously. This is a kernel process. So how can it became a Zombie?

Looks like a kernel bug.

Kernel threads can become zombies in exactly the same way as any other
process, ie if they die and their parent doesn't call wait.  As a
temporary hack, try something like this:

p.

Index: losetup.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/debian-boot/boot-floppies/utilities/dbootstrap/losetup.c,v
retrieving revision 1.7
diff -u -r1.7 losetup.c
--- losetup.c	2001/10/22 01:14:54	1.7
+++ losetup.c	2002/03/04 10:19:10
@@ -43,6 +43,8 @@
                device);
 	return( FALSE);
     }
+    /* reap any zombies that were created */
+    waitpid(-1, NULL, WNOHANG);
     close(fd);
     return( TRUE);
 }