Re: Top Question

[Tilghman Lesher <tilghman@mail.jeffandtilghman.com>]

On Monday 24 March 2003 19:48, Mark Blunier wrote:
> > When you're running Top what does it indicate when the word
> > defunct in parenthesis show up next to a process?
>
> Its a defunct process.  Some unices call them zombies. 
> Basically when a parent starts a child process, when the child
> exits, the parent clears out the environment that was set up
> with the child started.  If the parent does not do this after
> a child exits, it shows up as defunct.

More specifically, the defunct process is waiting for the parent
to check (collect) its exit status.  The exit status typically
indicates whether a process exited normally or with an error.
The man pages for waitpid(2), wait(2), wait3(2), or wait4(2) can
explain this in more detail, if you're interested.

-Tilghman


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