defunct processes?

[Aaron Solochek <aarons@andrew.cmu.edu>]

I have a sparc 5, which I've set up as an imap server through a ssl
tunnel (using stunnel) and it is very unstable.  Its running potato.  It
boots up, runs stunnel and ssh a daemons, the rest of the standard stuff
though inetd, and everything works fine.  Eventually, in a matter of
hours, things break.  The imap server stops responding, my open ssh
connections are dead, and when I go to its console, and ps aux, I see
that sshd stunnel, imapd and a few bash's, are defunct.  What does this
mean?  What causes this?  This is really quite annoying.

-Aaron Solochek
 leko@cmu.edu