On 25Jun2008 18:33, Daniel B. Thurman
<dant@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Using F8, I have found that Nautilus sometimes
hangs and
> runs at 100% CPU. Force killing Nautilus's drive
windows
> was the only way to recover. I am not sure that
force killing
> this drive window is related to the zombie that I
founding using
> top.
> I also discovered that my swap was increased to
2GB of 4GB
> and has stayed there ever since.
Zombies are just process slots of exit()ed
processes awaiting collection.
They do not consume CPU time or swap space.
> So before I accuse Nautilus as being the
zombie process, how
> do I locate it using ps or some other tool to
find out what is
> going on and to what process the zombie was?
Zombies are in the Z state. They are exited
programs whose parents have
not called wait() to collect the exit status.
> In the same breadth, is there a way to clear
zombie processes
> without being forced to reboot the system which
would certainly
> remove the zombie process and clear the swap
space?
Removing zombies will do NOTHING about your swap
space, since they are
not consuming it. (Of course a reboot will clear the
swap, as it does
everything else.)
They only way to clear a zombies process slot
(which is all a zombie
process actually is) is to find the zombie's parent
process (using ps'
"f" (forest) option, for example, or just looking at
the PPID column)
and either causing the parent to do a wait() for the
zombie if possible,
or to kill the parent (which will cause the zombies to
be inherited by
process 1, which will then wait() for it, cleaning it
up).
Zombies are essentially untidy but harmless. They
are not eating you
machine's brains (ram/swap/cpu).
Cheers,
--
Cameron Simpson <cs@xxxxxxxxxx> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/
Zombies don't get pumped. - Jake, in
rec.climbing
I like your signature ;)