How to find and clear zombie processes w/o rebooting?

[Cameron Simpson]

On 25Jun2008 20:49, Daniel B. Thurman <dant at cdkkt.com> wrote:
> Well! Thanks for the explanation!

No worries.

> I guess I will just reboot - problem solved!

No, just deferred. Presumably it will happen again.

Next time it happens, try doing a "ps elf" and examine the RSS (resident)
and VSZ (virtual size) columns. They may point the way to an unreasonably
large process. You can also tell "top" to sort its display by process
memory size, and to show "idle" processes (press "i"), which it normally
doesn't bother to display.

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

Why is it whatever we don't understand is called a 'thing'? - "Bones" McCoy