🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov10.152955.21859@menudo.uh.edu> sears@tree.egr.uh.edu writes:
>A process with a PID of -1 (also stated as <mnach-task>) is really a zombied  
>process.  A zombie doesn't not really cause any harm to the system, except  
>that it consumes 1 slot in the process table, of which there is a finite  
>number of slots.  When you run out of process slots, you will crash.
>
>It seems that one of the major creators of zombies is NeXT's Terminal.app.   
>Generally whenever you close a terminal.app window, a zombie will be created.
>
>Btw, the zombies can not be "killed" (even will kill -9).  Don't even bother  
>to attempt it.  But if you do, be prepared to reboot from a panic :-)

While a zombie'd process may appear as a <mach-task>, all <mach-task>'s
are not zombie'd processes.  <mach-task>'s are what they say they are,
Mach tasks. Most of them (my machine typically has 5 ) are kernel tasks
such as the sound driver and other drivers.  They aren't really Unix
processes, just bare bones Mach tasks.

A kernel loaded server exists as one of these <mach-task>'s and you can
create user level ones with task_create().  They do have a purpose.

Unless an inordinate amount of them are being generated they belong there
just as any of the other daemons and processes...

la la la,
-- 
::   Christopher Lloyd  ::  a74k110@titan.ucc.umass.edu  ::  Yrrid, Inc.    ::