[ale] Boot script becomes a zombie?

Jim Kinney jim.kinney at gmail.com
Mon Feb 22 15:51:34 EST 2010


Some parents have a lot of nerve raising their children to be zombies. As if
it's not bad enough that so many kids lack anything resembling respect for
others and lack motivation for anything but immediate creature comforts, now
some probably-trailer-trash-wannabe's are letting their brats become
zombies. It utterly appaling....

Oh.

Hmm.

Zombie Survival Guide is quite clear that to "kill" a zombie it is necessary
to destroy the brain.

Hmm.

So why is sendmail a sibling of the fast_cgi script again?

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 3:11 PM, James Sumners <james.sumners at gmail.com>wrote:

> I'm loathe to kill the parent process because it has a second child --
> sendmail. I kind of want sendmail running.
>
> $ ps -eH
> *snip*
>  1599 ?        00:00:00   cron
>  1606 ?        00:00:00     cron
>  1614 ?        00:00:00       boot_fastcgi_bi <defunct>
>  1629 ?        00:00:00       sendmail
> *snip*
>
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Lightner, Jeff <jlightner at water.com>
> wrote:
> > In that situation sometimes (though not always) killing the parent will
> > get rid of the zombie.
> >
> > As an HP presenter used to say at the start of his performance
> > presentations:
> > You can't kill a zombie because IT'S ALREADY DEAD!
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
> > Michael H. Warfield
> > Sent: Monday, February 22, 2010 2:29 PM
> > To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
> > Cc: mhw at wittsend.com
> > Subject: Re: [ale] Boot script becomes a zombie?
> >
> > On Sun, 2010-02-21 at 23:05 -0500, James Sumners wrote:
> >> I have a script that looks runs several other scripts in turn. I use
> >> this script to startup several FastCGI processes. This is the script:
> >
> >> ##########
> >> #!/bin/bash
> >> find /var/www/fastcgi/scripts/ -type f -execdir '{}' 2>&1 1>/dev/null
> > \;
> >> return $?
> >> ##########
> >
> >> I then have the following crontab entry for root:
> >> @reboot /path/to/boot_cgi_bin.sh
> >
> >> Every time I reboot my server, this boot_cgi_bin.sh script turns into
> >> a zombie (the cgi bins do get started). Does anyone see a reason why
> >> this script would hang up as a zombie process?
> >
> > A zombie process means that process terminated but the process (which
> > would seem to be cron in this case) which started it has not reaped the
> > child's status.  It's really all gone and only exists as an entry in the
> > proc table.  This CAN happen if a child it invokes leaves it's file
> > descriptors open and they're pipes back to the parent (it's what causes
> > ssh to refuse to terminate after running a script which restarts
> > services.).  I had to deal with that in the smbmount program when I was
> > maintaining it.
> >
> > Do a ps -lp {process id} on that process id and then see what the parent
> > process is (may be a shell).
> >
> > Might also redirect stdin from /dev/null just in case one of those
> > scripts you're invoking is doing something funny with stdin.
> >
> > Mike
> > --
> > Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
> >   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |
> > http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
> >   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best
> > of all
> >  PGP Key: 0x674627FF        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of
> > it!
> >
> > Proud partner. Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
> >
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>
>
> --
> James Sumners
> http://james.roomfullofmirrors.com/
>
> "All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts
> pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it
> is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become
> drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."
>
> Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto)
> CH:D 59
>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
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