On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 19:12:17 GMT,
Gary R. Hook <nospam@nospammers.net> wrote:


>cheng wrote:
>
>> Hi:
>> On my AIX 4.3.1, I can see some processes with the name "[]", and their
>> parent process is 1. I using 'kill -9' can't kill them. If they used the
>> resouse of the pty, then the pty can't be used. how can I deal with them?
>
>Actually, they're already dead, and the exit status is waiting to
>be harvested. There was likely a fix for this problem, but it's
>inclear whether it is available. 4.3.1 is remarkably old.
>

If the parent process is 1 the init process will take care of harvesting
the exit status. If it doesn't do that then either the process isn't a
zombie (defunct) yet, or the init process got stuck doing something else.


Another posibility is that the process is stuck trying to close devices.
If the device driver puts the process into an uninterruptible sleep, you
can't do anything about it until the device driver wakes up the process
again or you reboot.


Villy