Article View: comp.sys.next.programmer
Article #1586Re: zombies (was Re: What does a task with priority -1 mean?)
From: Ray Spalding
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 18:42
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 18:42
17 lines
1361 bytes
1361 bytes
To avoid zombies, a UNIX process doing a fork (a parent process) must reap it's child(ren). This is done by some varient of the wait(2) system call, and it may be helpful to install a SIGCHLD handler. The man pages seem to imply that wait() is an optional feature, but failure to call it will result in a zombie. It sounds like Terminal is not doing this properly. The Subprocess example does not seem to do this, either. Most UNIXes I'm familiar with report zombies as <defunct>, but Mach apparently doesn't, if what's been reported here is correct. Also, on other UNIXes, killing them (from root) is no problem. -- Ray Spalding, Office of Information Technology Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332-0715 Internet: ray.spalding@oit.gatech.edu (NeXT Mail accepted)
Technical Details
Message-ID:
<74594@hydra.gatech.EDU>Path:
arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!know!mips2!news.bbn.com!usc!sdd.hp.com!swrinde!gatech!prism!xray.gatech.edu!cc100aaReferences:
<1dmp94INNppe@uwm.edu> <1992Nov10.152955.21859@menudo.uh.edu> <10NOV199210153953@mpx2.lampf.lanl.gov>Show Full Headers
Complete Article Headers
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!know!mips2!news.bbn.com!usc!sdd.hp.com!swrinde!gatech!prism!xray.gatech.edu!cc100aa From: cc100aa@xray.gatech.edu (Ray Spalding) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.programmer Subject: Re: zombies (was Re: What does a task with priority -1 mean?) Message-ID: <74594@hydra.gatech.EDU> Date: 12 Nov 92 18:42:20 GMT References: <1dmp94INNppe@uwm.edu> <1992Nov10.152955.21859@menudo.uh.edu> <10NOV199210153953@mpx2.lampf.lanl.gov> Sender: news@prism.gatech.EDU Distribution: usa Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology Lines: 17