Re: is killing zombies possible w/o a reboot?

[Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>]

DervishD wrote:
>     Hi Bill :)
> 
>  * Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> dixit:
> 
>>>   Or write a little program that just 'wait()'s for the specified
>>>PID's. That is perfectly portable IMHO. But I must admit that the
>>>preferred way should be killing the parent. 'init' will reap the
>>>children after that.
>>
>>You can't wait() for the process, you have to use waitfor(), and the 
>>last time I tried that it didn't work, although I don't remember the 
>>symptom beyond that.
> 
> 
>     You can't wait for other's children. OTOH, if we talk about your
> children, you can do wait() or waitpid() (I assume that you referred
> to waitpid(), since there isn't waitfor() AFAIK). The only difference
> is that wait suspends the process until information from a child is
> available.

Yes, thank you, I was thinking "wait for the PID" and typed that.
> 
>     If you are talking about others' children, then your call to
> waitpid() (or wait()) failed with ECHILD: not your child.

That's what happened when I tried it a few months ago. I suppose one 
could try sending a SIGCHLD to the parent and see if it does something 
helpful.

-- 
    -bill davidsen (davidsen@tmr.com)
"The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the
  last possible moment - but no longer"  -me