Re: kill: cannot kill some processes
On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, brian moore wrote:
> > does the process list "Z" under STAT ? if it is the process has gone
> > zombied and i don't think there is much you can do. sometimes zombie'd
> > processes die on their own eventually many times they will not die until
> > you reboot ..
>
> Not quite true... zombies don't ever die: they're already dead.
While the description of zombie processes is accurate, I think another
likely situation is that the process is in "uninterruptible sleep," i.e.
the 'D' state. This happens when a process is blocked in a system call -
it will be 'D' until the kernel function returns. Kernel bugs, hardware
problems, and dead NFS mounts can cause these kernel functions to take
a long time or forever.
In such a case, you really are stuck; unless the resource the process is
waiting for frees up, it's going to hang around until a reboot.
One thing about zombie process: Don't worry about trying to "make" them go
away. They don't consume any CPU time, or any other resources other than
the slot in the process table and the less than 1K of memory required to
hold their state information. They are not worth worrying about.
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