[ale] w in Digital Unix

Mon Sep 4 22:36:31 EDT 2000

At the lowest level, what this means is that the parent process of 580
didn't call the system call 'wait()' or 'waitpid()'.  It's either
because of a bug in the program, or the parent program is blocked
waiting on something else to happen.

If you run 'ps -ef' on the box, find out what the parent pid of 580 is. That is
the program with the real problem.  If you kill that pid, and keep
killing parents, eventually one of them will behave correctly and
clean up its children (process number 1, init will do this.) and the
zombie will go away.

-Eric.

Teo Maslo writes:
 > Hiya guys,
 >     I am very much a newbie in Unix world so please bear with me. I am
 > working with some people on a student server at University. It is running
 > Digital Unix V4.0e for Alpha. A little problem we have is that when we run w
 > it shows connections that have been terminated. Here are the screen shots:
 > 
 > dreamer at toaster ~$ w
 > 10:28  up 5 days, 20:09,  9 users,  load average: 0.10, 0.13, 0.12
 > User     tty        from             login@    idle   JCPU   PCPU what
 > dreamer  p0         usasa211898.city 14:31        4   5:25   5:25 w
 > dreamer  p1         usasa211898.city 14:40    6days               -
 > 
 > 
 > and also
 > 
 > dreamer at toaster ~$ ps x
 >    PID TTY      S           TIME CMD
 >    580 ??         <      0:00.00 <defunct>
 >   5060 ttypa    S        0:01.16 -bash (bash)
 > 
 > 
 > lastly when I try kill the process this is what happens
 > 
 > dreamer at toaster ~$ kill 580
 > bash: kill: (580) - No such pid
 > 
 > Has anyone else seen this before and does anyone know how to fix it?
 > 
 > 
 > Regards,
 > 
 > Teo Maslo
 > <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
 > <HTML><HEAD>
 > <META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type>
 > <META content="MSHTML 5.00.2614.3500" name=GENERATOR>
 > <STYLE></STYLE>
 > </HEAD>
 > <BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
 > <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Hiya guys,<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I am very much a 
 > newbie in Unix world so please bear with me. I am<BR>working with some people on 
 > a student server at University. It is running<BR>Digital Unix V4.0e for Alpha. A 
 > little problem we have is that when we run w<BR>it shows connections that have 
 > been terminated. Here are the screen shots:<BR><BR>dreamer at toaster ~$ 
 > w<BR>10:28&nbsp; up 5 days, 20:09,&nbsp; 9 users,&nbsp; load average: 0.10, 
 > 0.13, 0.12<BR>User&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 > tty&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 > from&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 > login@&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; idle&nbsp;&nbsp; JCPU&nbsp;&nbsp; PCPU 
 > what<BR>dreamer&nbsp; p0&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 > usasa211898.city 14:31&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 4&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 > 5:25&nbsp;&nbsp; 5:25 w<BR>dreamer&nbsp; 
 > p1&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; usasa211898.city 
 > 14:40&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 > 6days&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 > -<BR><BR><BR>and also<BR><BR>dreamer at toaster ~$ ps x<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp; PID 
 > TTY&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 > S&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; TIME 
 > CMD<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp; 580 ??&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 > &lt;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 0:00.00 &lt;defunct&gt;<BR>&nbsp; 5060 
 > ttypa&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; S&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 0:01.16 
 > -bash (bash)<BR><BR><BR>lastly when I try kill the process this is what 
 > happens<BR><BR>dreamer at toaster ~$ kill 580<BR>bash: kill: (580) - No such 
 > pid<BR><BR>Has anyone else seen this before and does anyone know how to fix 
 > it?<BR><BR><BR>Regards,<BR><BR>Teo Maslo</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>
--
To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe ale" in message body.