Question

193

How to find zombie process?

rated 0 times [ 193] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 470766 / 1 Year ago, fri, may 12, 2023, 8:09:56

System information as of Fri Mar  9 19:40:01 KST 2012



  System load:    0.59               Processes:           167

  Usage of /home: 23.0% of 11.00GB   Users logged in:     1

  Swap usage:     0%                 IP address for eth1: 192.168.0.1



  => There is 1 zombie process.



  Graph this data and manage this system at https://landscape.canonical.com/



10 packages can be updated.

4 updates are security updates.



Last login: Fri Mar  9 10:23:48 2012

a@SERVER:~$ ps auxwww | grep 'Z'

USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND

usera     13572  0.0  0.0   7628   992 pts/2    S+   19:40   0:00 grep --color=auto Z

a@SERVER:~$

How to find that zombie process?

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torlim

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4 Years ago

answered 1 Year ago antoccasiona · Accepted Answer

To kill a zombie (process) you have to kill its parent process (just like real zombies!), but the question was how to find it.

Find the zombie (The question answered this part):

a@SERVER:~$ ps aux | grep 'Z'

What you get is Zombies and anything else with a Z in it, so you will also get the grep:

USER       PID     %CPU %MEM  VSZ    RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND

usera      13572   0.0  0.0   7628   992 pts/2    S+   19:40   0:00 grep --color=auto Z

usera      93572   0.0  0.0   0      0   ??       Z    19:40   0:00 something

Find the zombie's parent:

a@SERVER:~$ pstree -p -s 93572

Will give you:

init(1)---cnid_metad(1311)---cnid_dbd(5145)

In this case you do not want to kill that parent process and you should be quite happy with one zombie, but killing the immediate parent process 5145 should get rid of it.

Additional resources on askubuntu:

What are zombie processes?

Is there any way to kill a zombie process without reboot?