strange pids under heavy load (5.2-RC)

[Julian Elischer]

On Mon, 8 Dec 2003, Gordon Bergling wrote:

> Hi,
> 
>     0  p2  ZW+    0:00.00  (sh)
>     0  p2  ZW+    0:00.00  (sh)
>     0  p2  ZW+    0:00.00  (sh)

[...]

> is running in the background.
> 
> I am not sure about this. Maybe its a problem.

These are "Zombies" and are there becasue the parent process (possibly
pid 1) has not yet had a chance to clean them up. (due to the system
being so busy).

A Zombie process is one for which the parent has not yet called 'wait'
to retrieve the statistics, exit status, etc.