User's cron job creates zombie process on 5.3

[Peter Jeremy]

On Wed, 2005-Jan-19 21:14:26 -0800, spam maps wrote:
>> 	( /usr/bin/ssh -n -f ${tunnel} & )
>
>Alas, no success. Still get the <defunct> zombie
>process.
>
>I actually wonder if this is an odd or buggy behaviour
>of ssh, or is cron making a mistake here?

The cron daemon (which will have a PPID of 1) forks a copy of itself
to actually handle the cron job (I suspect this is the parent of the
zombie that you are seeing).  This child process runs "/bin/sh -c CRONJOB"
(where CRONJOB is the line in your crontab) and I suspect this is the
zombie you are seeing.

My guess is that your ssh process is holding open file descriptors and
the cron child process is waiting for these descriptors to close before
wait()ing for the child.  If this is true, then you should avoid it
with something like:
	( /usr/bin/ssh -n -f ${tunnel} >/dev/null 2>&1 & )

(or redirect to a suitable file).

>Leaving a zombie process around, means there's a kind
>of bug/mistake somewhere, right?

Yes.  But it's not necessarily a bug in FreeBSD :-).

-- 
Peter Jeremy