<defunct> debugging routine?

[Peter Rabbitson]

On Sun, May 16, 2004 at 07:21:26AM +0100, Julian Field wrote:
> At 01:47 16/05/2004, you wrote:
> >It should be something extremely simple but I can not seem to find the
> >answer. After the last upgrade of MailScanner
> >on my server I get a <defunct> fork of Mailscanner after each processed
> >batch. The scanner in general seems to work
> >properly and I did not detect any mail loss, however this fact is still
> >pretty annoying. I tried to figure out what is
> >causing this, but I can not increase the verbosity of the log reporting. I
> >tried to start mailscanner in debug mode,
> >however the resulting information is almost identical to what you get
> >while running in daemon mode. Essentially my
> >question is how do I trace the whole process of receiving/scanning/sending.
>
> Check your maillog for signs of error messages.
> Is it actually processing mail successfully?
> --
> Julian Field
> www.MailScanner.info
> Professional Support Services at www.MailScanner.biz
> MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support
> PGP footprint: EE81 D763 3DB0 0BFD E1DC 7222 11F6 5947 1415 B654
>
> -------------------------- MailScanner list ----------------------
> To leave, send    leave mailscanner    to jiscmail at jiscmail.ac.uk
> Before posting, please see the Most Asked Questions at
> http://www.mailscanner.biz/maq/     and the archives at
> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/mailscanner.html

As I said - the mail flows through without any visible problems (I hope).
Here is what happens:

MailScanner[19525]: MailScanner E-Mail Virus Scanner version 4.30.3 starting...
MailScanner[19525]: Using locktype = posix
MailScanner[19525]: Creating hardcoded struct_flock subroutine for linux (Linux-type)
MailScanner[19537]: MailScanner E-Mail Virus Scanner version 4.30.3 starting...
MailScanner[19537]: Using locktype = posix
MailScanner[19537]: Creating hardcoded struct_flock subroutine for linux (Linux-type)
MailScanner[19537]: New Batch: Scanning 1 messages, 718 bytes
MailScanner[19537]: Virus and Content Scanning: Starting
MailScanner[19537]: Uninfected: Delivered 1 messages

...19524  0.0  3.2 20620 16684 ?       SNs  09:12   0:00 /usr/bin/perl -I/usr/share/MailScanner...
...19525  0.1  3.2 20876 16848 ?       SN   09:12   0:00 /usr/bin/perl -I/usr/share/MailScanner...
...19537  0.2  3.2 21004 16988 ?       SN   09:12   0:00 /usr/bin/perl -I/usr/share/MailScanner...
...19567  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        ZN   09:13   0:00 [MailScanner] <defunct>

As before - my question is how to diagnose something like this when there are no apparent errors/lock-ups/malfunctions.
These zombie children die after about 15 minutes. I perfomr content scanning, clanav scanning and f-prot scanning on each
batch. The pid of the zombie processed does not appear anywhere in the logs. I would think to attach a tracer but how could
I do this if I do not know what the resulting pid would be?

Peter

-------------------------- MailScanner list ----------------------
To leave, send    leave mailscanner    to jiscmail at jiscmail.ac.uk
Before posting, please see the Most Asked Questions at
http://www.mailscanner.biz/maq/     and the archives at
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/mailscanner.html