zombie processes

[Marcel Karras]

> >2. Whenever I send a mail, there'll be a new zombie process and ps
> >shows"[MailScanner <defunct>]". The mail will be scanned and
> >delivered just perfect but you can certainly imagine what would
> >happen if this server would work in a productive area rather than a
> >testing one.
>
> And you should find it will destroy the zombie process itself pretty
> quickly too.

No, it won't. There aren't registered in /var/spool/MailScanner/incoming
but they are still hanging around with their process informations still
waiting to be used.

pstree -a shows a likely state:

+-MailScanner-+-2*[MailScanner]
|             `-3*[MailScanner---MailScanner]

As you can see MailScanner has 5 child processes and 3 of them a further
child process remaining in zombie state. And they won't disappear. It
seems to me if a child forked a process which exited within kernel
context or terminated otherwise.

--
Contact: toka at freebits.de
http://www.freebits.de
Unix, Linux && OpenSource

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