strange pids under heavy load (5.2-RC)

[Gordon Bergling]

Hi,

On Mon Dec 08, 2003 at 12:16PM -0800, Julian Elischer wrote:
> 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.

Please excuse my nescience. ;)

	--Gordon

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Gordon Bergling <GBergling at bsd-network.org>	http://www.0xFCE3.net/
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