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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: What is a zombie?
Date: 28 Sep 1996 19:17:21 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
Lines: 33
Message-ID: <52jtk1$8s@uriah.heep.sax.de>
References: <52a5dt$qef@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <3249D8F7.2EA39DDA@lambert.org>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> wrote:
> Actually, it means the process has exited, but that its status
> has not been reaped by its parent process. Typically, this
> happens when inexperienced programmers write code that calls
> fork, but doesn't call wait(2) or ignore SIGCHLD -- either of
> which will cause the zombie to exit.
Ignoring SIGCHLD won't help -- it is already ignored by default:
SIGNAL(3) FreeBSD Programmer's Manual SIGNAL(3)
NAME
signal - simplified software signal facilities
...
Name Default Action Description
...
SIGCHLD discard signal child status has changed
Implementing SA_NOCLDWAIT for sa_flags in sigaction(2) would be the
way to go, but nobody has done this so far in FreeBSD. So your only
chance is to actually install the d*mn signal handler, and have it
fetch the exit status of the child.
--
cheers, J"org
joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)