Confused

[Cameron Simpson]

On 15:15 12 Jul 2004, Nitin <nitinmehta at kappa.net.in> wrote:
| I'm really very confused about the problem. Since the last time I installed fr
| esh RedHat 7.2 on my web server, following processes are continuously added to t
| he list of processes.
| 
| 15306 ?        S      0:00 CROND
| 15475 ?        T      0:00 awk -v progname=/etc/cron.daily/00webalizer progname 
| 15476 ?        Z      0:00 [awk <defunct>]
| 15608 ?        T      0:00 /bin/awk
| 15612 ?        Z      0:00 [awk <defunct>]
[...]

Ok, all the Z processes are zombies, the husk of an exited process which has
not yet been wait()ed for. Their parents seem to be the awk processes in T state.
T means stopped, and that's very odd (but also a complete explaination of why
the zombie is still hanging around).
Pick one of the processes (eg 15476) from the list above and go:

	lsof -p 15476

See what it has open. Normally a process becomes stopped in only two
ways: it is stopped with the SIGSTOP signal (sent by hand by someone)
or stopped as a result of job control.

I don't suppose you started cron by hand from a terminal did you?

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

Undulations 12:3: "For I have seen the face of God, and He is in Turn 10...."
        - Ix