Zombie process

[nappaji]

Hello,
I have a zombie process on my system. I see the parent process (owned by some other user)running, but am unable to kill the parent process even as root. The parent is not the "init" or any other system process. Its just another simple GUI program that is running.

Is there any reason why I am not able to kill the parent process as root???

Thanks

 

[KenCunningham]

Basically zombie processes are 'lost' to the OS, that is why you are unable to kill it. As long as it's not eating resources it's nothing to be too concerned about. When you next reboot it will be tidied up. HTH.

 

[newmangj]

root should be able to kill just about anything - have you tried "kill -9 pidnum"

 

[Laopang]

I speculate that maybe, some signal handlers in your program catch and ignore the SIGINT, SIGTERM etc.

As the description above , you can remove the zombie process now, but I suggest you to find out the cause, it is important, I think.

 

[tarn]

Are you sure you are trying to kill the parents not the zombies?

I've just recently posted something here about this:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?SQID=612250&SPID=54&page=1

I hope that will help?

Laurie.