AIX Defunct Process Problem

[Guest_imported]

Dear support,

What is a "Defunct Process" ? It's a problem ?
and how to remove them in AIX ?

Regards!


Jacky Su

 

[KenCunningham]

A defunct process is usually one who's parent process has died, leaving it nowhere to 'report to'. They're difficult (if not impossible) to get rid of without a reboot, but the good news is that provided there aren't too many of them, they don't do any harm in performance terms etc. If there are hundreds of them, take a look at your application(s) for possible causes. HTH.

 

[MoshiachNow]

Hi,

CAn use "ps -auw | grep defunct" to detect the zombies in the system.

They normally die when their PARENT process is killed,even without reboot.

The problem with them that they consume virtual paging space - use normally "topas" to monitor the PS.
"Long live king Moshiach !"
h

http://www.noahide.com/movement.htm

 

[Yegolev]

Give this a shot:

#ps -ef|grep defunct|awk '{print $2}'|xargs -n 1 kill -9

If you do not know what those are, please read man pages for each command. I do not suggest running commands you do not understand. IBM Certified -- AIX 4.3 Obfuscation

 

[Guest_imported]

Dear Support,

If we kill "defunct" processes several time and then still
exist,what should we do ?


Regards!


Jacky Su

 

[MoshiachNow]

Dear visitor,

If it exist with the same PID - you'll probably have to reboot.

If the same defunct processes reincarnate with different PIDs - you have to run "errpt -a" and look for :

SOFTWARE PROGRAM ABNORMALLY TERMINATED

This will indicate which processes fail and possibly leave defunct sons.


"Long live king Moshiach !"
h

http://www.noahide.com/movement.htm