Thanks for all the great responses. I still haven't solved my specific
problem, but I'm now pointed in the right direction. By the way, the PPID
of all the defunct processes belongs to a Sendmail process.
Regards,
Dan Stoner
dan_at_jcc.com
---- begin summary ---
>> What exactly are defunct processes, why can't they be killed, and does
>> leaving them around impact the system?
>>
><defunct> processes are child processes that have exited and are waiting
>aroung to pass their exit status back to the parent (ppid) process. This
>is a normal state for a process to go through; it is known as the
>"zombie" state. What is not normal however, is for the processes to stay
>around forever. They cannot be killed.... because they are already dead!
Helpful commands to determine the parent of the defunct process:
ps ajxw
ps -elf
---- end summary ---
Received on Tue Feb 01 2000 - 20:35:17 NZDT