I'm not sure if you are really talking about processes here.
You may be seeing hung network connections:
I see in netstat that processes get stuck in TIME_WAIT for a long time. How can I change this behaviour?
For some reason, OpenServer sets that to 30 minutes even while stating that the recommended setting is 4 minutes!
You can edit /etc/default/inet and change tcp_2msl to lower the time. Stop and restart tcp/
Or perhaps you are seeing phantom users:
People log out but still show up in who
This information is logged in /etc/utmp and /etc/utmpx. In 5.0.4, this information is cleared when the system reboots. For earlier releases, edit /etc/bcheckrc as follows. You will see the first of the following three lines already there; add the other two below it.
/bin/su bin -c "/etc/devnm / 2>/dev/null" | /etc/setmnt
[ -w /etc/utmp ] && > /etc/utmp
[ -w /etc/utmpx ] && > /etc/utmpx
Also, "cwtmp" ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/scobins/cwtmp is a freely available utility that clears stale logins.
And finally see faq58-1351 here also Tony Lawrence
SCO Unix/Linux Resources
tony@pcunix.com