on Tue, May 22, 2001 at 11:35:37PM -0700, Erik Steffl (steffl@bigfoot.com) wrote:
> Oki DZ wrote:
<...>
> > Whoa, I tried many times, kill -9, killall -9 <progname>, to no avail.
> > BTW, if I unload the NIC driver (along with lo), would the daemon exit?
> > I was thinking about it, but since I was remote logging in to the
> > machine, rebooting was the only option.
>
> check if it's a zombie - if it's a zombie it was already killed, just
> waits for something to be really unloaded from memory (usually it
> doesn't take long). IIRC one reason an application is zombie is that
> its parent waits for return value (which is sort of held by zombie,
> waitin for parent to process the info or something like that).
From _UNIX Power Tools_ (O'Reilly & Associates):
You cannot kill zombies; they are already dead.
"What is a zombie?" I hear you ask. "Why should a dead process stay
around?"
Dead processes stick around for two principal reasons. The lesser
of these is that they provide a sort of "context" for closing open
file descriptors, and shuting down other resources (memory, swap
space, and so forth). This generally happens immediately, and the
process remails only for its major purpose: to hold onto its name
and exit status.
So, it's sort of an inheritance/probate process for Unix processes,
except that the body doesn't go away until the will has been properly
executed the entire estate distributed. It's dead, it's not doing
anything, it just wants its final bequests fulfilled.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal
http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
Disclaimer: http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/
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