SW process not finish

[mackiew]

Hello, I have this problem:
I run a Perl program that creates a lot of children processes
(with fork) and finishes when all the children have finshed their job
(Each one of the children processes performs a task and then finishes).
Sometimes the processes
that are created with the fork finish normally, but sometimes they
don't.
I have done "ps ax | grep recorridaZona", since that is the name
of the Perl script, and I got the next output at the end, when
all the other processes finished normally, but the rebel one didn't
finish:

------
2306 ? S 31:44 perl -l -w ./recorridaZona uy. 44.99.206.in-addr.arpa
10292 ? SW 0:00 [recorridaZona]

------

Process 2306 is the father process and 10292 is the child that didnt
finish.
I think its very suspicious the "SW"; as far as I know this means
that the process is sleeping (S), but i dont know exactly what
the W means, and the man page doesnt explain too much (or I didnt
understand). Can
this "SW" be relationed with the problem?
Thank you very much...

 

[chenn]

Usually a W means it is a swapped out process, while S means sleeping. You can find it in the manpages of ps as well as in man top.

regards
chenn