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Re: Defunct processes with 1.5.25-15; seemingly reproducible


A <defunct> process is not necesarily the real "problem". All <defunct> process are processes that their parent has NOT done a wait(2) yet. Since these <defunct> processes have called exit(2), they must hang around until a wait(2) is completed so that the exit status can be returned to the parent.

   You need to understand more of the parent/child relationship before
   you can pass blame, if any.



Dave Steenburgh wrote:
cgf wrote:
Defunct processes are not necessarily indicative of a cygwin problem.
This could easily be a problem with gnuplot.

Given the sum of my own limited knowledge of the problem at hand (in summary: every program involved is in my local cygwin directory), I figured it was best to ask here first.

Dave Steenburgh wrote:
$ ps
     PID    PPID    PGID     WINPID  TTY  UID    STIME COMMAND
...
    4164    1288    7684       5504    6 1003 23:49:20
    5392    3224    5984       6100    5 1003 23:49:06 <defunct>
    1452    5240    5984       8104    5 1003 23:49:06 <defunct>
    5240    3224    5984       4532    5 1003 23:49:06 <defunct>
...

...
The PIDs seem to be the same every time this happens. Specifically, I
have seen 5240 and 1452 every time. Whether that's significant, I
don't know.

Now, this is interesting... I killed those defunct processes with process explorer, and subsequently confirmed via ps, task manager, and process explorer that they were no longer running. I began another session with gnuplot, and this time there are three:

$ ps
...
     5240    3224    5984       4532    5 1003 23:49:06 <defunct>
     4164    1288    7684       5504    6 1003 23:49:20 <defunct>
     5392    3224    5984       6100    5 1003 23:49:06 <defunct>
...

For each of those, the entire row is identical to a row in my previous
message.  Since I started the session around 14:00, and the last
output file's modification timestamp is 17:21, I'd say the timestamps
for those three processes are not reliable.  Is it possible that the
original defunct processes were never truly killed?  If so, can they
be killed without rebooting?

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