Andreas,

you are right. I was misled because Pedd was talking of "defunct" processes. As
Jurjen pointed out they are just the idle processes, one for each cpu.

Johannes


Andreas Schulze wrote:
>>connect wrote:
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>I have a client running AIX 5.1 and have found a couple of defunct
>
> processes
>
>>>chewing up CPU usage.
>>>We have tried killing these processes which comes back stating "Then
>>>specified process does not exist" we have tried rebooting the machine
>
> but
>
>>>the processes are still there. Can you tell me how to get rid of these
>
> or if
>
>>>they are part of the unix kernal....
>>>This is a quick screen shot of ps vg | head -10
>>> 516 - A 16329:01 0 12 19828 xx 0 19816 24.3
>
> 0.0
>
>>>wait
>>> 774 - A 15528:23 0 12 19828 xx 0 19816 23.1
>
> 0.0
>
>>>wait
>>> 1032 - A 15743:58 0 12 19828 xx 0 19816 23.5
>
> 0.0
>
>>>wait
>>> 1290 - A 16005:45 0 12 19828 xx 0 19816 23.9
>
> 0.0
>
>>>wait
>>># ps -ef | grep 1032
>>> root 124662 169142 0 09:38:05 pts/106 0:00 grep 1032
>>># kill -1 1032
>>>kill: 1032: 0403-003 The specified process does not exist.
>>>
>>>
>>>Any suggestion would be much appreciated.
>>>
>>>
>>>Cheers
>>>
>>>Pedds : )
>>>
>
> "Johannes" <johannes.gross@gmx.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:cgh96v$vvd$03$1@news.t-online.com...
>
>>When a child process dies the parent process gets notified with a signal
>>(SIGCHLD). The child process stays as DEFUNCT (also called zombie) in the
>>process list until the parent process deals with signal (by calling wait()
>
> or
>
>>waitpid()). If you are not interested in your dying childs set the signal
>>handler for SIGCHLD to IGNORE. BTW, this is UNIX not AIX.
>>
>>DEFUNCTs which stay in the process list are a programing error. Identify
>
> the
>
>>parent process with ps -ef and send the programer the man pages for wait()
>
> and
>
>>waitpid() :-)
>>
>>Johannes
>>
>>
>
> Hallo folks,
>
> Pedds, from your screen output I would think that you have a 4-processor
> server that is running a wait process for every cpu. Whenever the cpu is
> idle the wait process kicks in an will appear to use the cpu. However these
> wait processes run at the lowest priority possible and will NOT affect any
> other program/application. Hence no need to kill them ;-)
>
> Johannes, full marks for the effort but I doubt that the wait processes can
> be explained the way you did. Btw. most zombies I have seen so far relate to
> shell scripts that spawn off other processes without handling them properly
> (i.e. not closing them again / waiting for them to close). And AIX 5L
> improved to a great extend when it comes to zombies. While with 4.3 zombies
> almost never disappeard without a reboot 5L will almost always manage to get
> rid of those zombies within a reasonable time.
>
> Regards,
> Andreas
>
>