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How does a child process become a zombie process?
A Zombie is created when a parent process does not use the wait system call after a child dies to read its exit status, and an orphan is child process that is reclaimed by init when the original parent process terminates before the child.
What causes a zombie process?
Zombie processes are when a parent starts a child process and the child process ends, but the parent doesn’t pick up the child’s exit code. The process object has to stay around until this happens – it consumes no resources and is dead, but it still exists – hence, ‘zombie’.
Does Kill kill child processes?
No, when you kill a process alone, it will not kill the children. Otherwise, orphans will be linked to init , as shown by your third screenshot (PPID of the child has become 1).
What kind of process can be reaped?
The process of eliminating zombie processes is known as ‘reaping’. The simplest method is to call wait , but this will block the parent process if the child has not yet terminated. Alternatives are to use waitpid to poll or SIGCHLD to reap asynchronously. The method described here uses SIGCHLD .
How do I fix zombie processes?
To clean up a zombie, it must be waited on by its parent, so killing the parent should work to eliminate the zombie. (After the parent dies, the zombie will be inherited by pid 1, which will wait on it and clear its entry in the process table.) If your daemon is spawning children that become zombies, you have a bug.
What happens when you kill a child process?
When the parent dies, the orphaned child process is adopted by init (process ID 1). When orphan processes die, they do not remain as zombie processes; instead, they are wait ed on by init . The result is that a process that is both a zombie and an orphan will be reaped automatically.
How do I clean up zombie processes?
A zombie is already dead, so you cannot kill it. To clean up a zombie, it must be waited on by its parent, so killing the parent should work to eliminate the zombie. (After the parent dies, the zombie will be inherited by pid 1, which will wait on it and clear its entry in the process table.)