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Received: by minnie.vk1xwt.ampr.org with NNTP id AA7620 ; Mon, 25 Jan 93 12:18:58 EST Xref: sserve comp.unix.ultrix:16078 comp.unix.bsd:10334 Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!sgiblab!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!uunet!dove!dove.nist.gov!przemek From: przemek@rrdstrad.nist.gov (Przemek Klosowski) Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix,comp.unix.bsd Subject: Zombie processes (Ultrix 4.3/MIPS) Message-ID: <PRZEMEK.93Jan22154141@rrdstrad.nist.gov> Date: 22 Jan 93 20:41:41 GMT Sender: news@dove.nist.gov Followup-To: comp.unix.ultrix Organization: U. of Maryland/NIST Lines: 37 Hello! We are running a Ultrix 4.3 system with a bunch of X terminals, controlled by xdm. The X terminal login sessions result in creating of zombie processes; a typical process lineage (from parents to children) might be: UserId Flags PID WCHN Stat Command root 1008001 147 a364c I /usr/bin/X11/xdm root 1008001 6134 acc18 I -rrdxt11:0 (xdm) peter 11008001 10652 a364c I xterm -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls +j -sb -fn peter 11008401 10658 Z <exiting> There are usually two such processes, both children of Xterm. The wait channel for the Xterm process indicates that it waits in 'select' (as reported by SPS3.0). The Xsession file execs the xterm command as its last action, and the zombies are children of Xterm. However, when I added echo/sleep commands to the beginnign of .cshrc and .login, I realized that the zombies are created before .cshrc is executed. Is there a way to find out how the zombies appear (i.e. which images are executed, if any)? The zombies do not seem ta use memory or CPU time; however, we do seem to have a unaccountably high load average, which disturbs mail, among other things. I would appreciate help in finding out what is going on. -- przemek klosowski (przemek@rrdstrad.nist.gov) Reactor Division (bldg. 235), E111 National Institute of Standards and Technology Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA (301) 975 6249