On Sat, 7 Mar 2009, Paul Bransford wrote:
> On Sat, 2009-03-07 at 17:30 -0500, Paul Bransford wrote:
>> On Sat, 2009-03-07 at 14:13 -0500, Eben King wrote:
>>> How can I get rid of these?
>>>
>>> 4871 root 0 0 0 0 exit Z 0 0.0 0:00 aplay <defunct>
>>> 4874 root 0 0 0 0 exit Z 0 0.0 0:00 aplay <defunct>
...
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_process
>>
>> Whatever process is calling these children needs to read their return
>> value. These processes are harmless in that manner, each one only
>> containing enough memory to hold process information and the return
>> value. They should die as soon as that value is read.
> Of particular note from that article:
>
> To remove zombies from a system, the SIGCHLD signal can be sent to the
> parent manually, using the kill command. If the parent process still
> refuses to reap the zombie, the next step would be to remove the parent
> process. When a process loses its parent, init becomes its new parent.
> Init periodically executes the wait system call to reap any zombies with
> init as parent.
Method 1: no go:
eben@pc:~$ ps axf | grep -B 1 '[a]play'
18532 tty1 S 0:00 /bin/sh -e /etc/rc.local
18534 tty1 Z 0:00 \_ [aplay] <defunct>
18550 tty1 Z 0:00 \_ [aplay] <defunct>
...
eben@pc:~$ ps axf | grep -B 1 '[a]play' | wc -l
28
eben@pc:~$ sudo kill -SIGCHLD 18532
eben@pc:~$ ps axf | grep -B 1 '[a]play' | wc -l
28
Method 2: success:
eben@pc:~$ sudo kill 18532
eben@pc:~$ ps axf | grep -B 1 '[a]play'
eben@pc:~$
Thanks. I've changed the method they're launched, so maybe this way will
work better.
--
-eben QebWenE01R@vTerYizUonI.nOetP royalty.mine.nu:81
If you need someone to blame
Throw a rock in the air
You'll hit someone guilty -- U2, _Zooropa_, "Dirty Day"
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