defunct processes owned by init, not being reaped ?

[Chris Friesen <chris.friesen@genband.com>]

I'm seeing something very strange.  I've got a system running a modified
2.6.27.18.  There are two tasks that are showing up as defunct but owned
by init:

root@typhoon-base-unit1:/root> ps -ef|grep defun
root    9933   1  0 09:05 ?   00:00:23 [oamFmLogServerP] <defunct>
root    9959   1  0 09:05 ?   00:00:21 [oamFmCliServerP] <defunct>
root   27674 17021  0 18:17 pts/2  00:00:00 grep defun

I tried sending init a SIGCHLD to force it to reap them.  Init tries to
wait for any children, but it doesn't catch them and they remain
defunct--here's the strace of init:

stat64("/dev/initctl", {st_mode=S_IFIFO|0600, st_size=0, ...}) = 0
fstat64(10, {st_mode=S_IFIFO|0600, st_size=0, ...}) = 0
stat64("/dev/initctl", {st_mode=S_IFIFO|0600, st_size=0, ...}) = 0
select(11, [10], NULL, NULL, {5, 0})    = ? ERESTARTNOHAND (To be restarted)
--- SIGCHLD (Child exited) @ 0 (0) ---
waitpid(-1, 0xffcbf6ac, WNOHANG)        = 0
sigreturn()                             = ? (mask now [])
time(NULL)                              = 1281723340


Anyone got any ideas what could possibly result in this sort of behaviour?

Thanks,

Chris

-- 
Chris Friesen
Software Developer
GENBAND
chris.friesen@genband.com
www.genband.com