On 2004-11-12, Ken <ucstyle@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Does anyone know how to check all the processes of a defunct process?
> I would like to see what program, application, etc actually owned the
> process that's now defunct. I know there's a way in SUN but not sure
> in AIX.

I'm not 100% sure, but doesn't the PPID of a zombie remain available? If so,
you can just check with 'ps' which process is the current parent of the
zombie.

Note that this might not give the results you expect: if a process spawns
a lot of zombies and then exits itself, the zombies get re-parented to
the (innocent) parent process of the zombie-spawning process. So this process
now has zombies, but isn't responsible for them. When the zombies eventually
get reparented to init, they are periodically reaped.

--
Jurjen Oskam
"I often reflect that if "privileges" had been called "responsibilities" or
"duties", I would have saved thousands of hours explaining to people why
they were only gonna get them over my dead body." - Lee K. Gleason, VMS sysadmin