Adam Galant <agalant@telestar.com.pl> [2002-08-23 15:52:00 +0200]: > > You have no more process slots. If you run 'ps ax' you should probably > > see many, many entries that shouldn't be there for some program. Kill > > it. Possibly java. For me it used to be gnomeicu. > > Found it already (unfortunately after posting this message). It was wmmail > <defunct>. > > Thanks for help! > > BTW, is there any way to get rid of this kind of junk without uninstalling > or killing those processes manually? Kill the parent. Any process listed as defunct is already dead. Those are zombies, the walking dead. The system hold the process slot open until the parent can take the return code. The parent wait()s on dead children to get their status. If a parent does not wait() on their children then the child is kept around as a zombie until the parent does do so. Or until the parent dies. If the parent dies then all children of that process are inherited by process 1, init, which will wait() on all children and clean up the process table. To get rid of defunct zombies you must find the parent and kill the parent. Use the hiearchical listing feature of ps to do that. ps -efH | less Find the bad parent and kill the bad parent. Bob
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