Zombie processes

Andreas Ericsson ae at op5.se
Fri Jul 18 09:29:39 CEST 2008


Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 12:02:34PM -0400, Hart, Harry M. CTR USJFCOM SUPPORT.SUPPORT JTC-I wrote:
>> I should have said NsClient++ instead of NRPE. It is a windows box I'm
>> trying to monitor. 
> 
> That would have cleared it up, yes.
> 
> Windows *has* zombie processes?  I wouldn't have thought its process
> model really created such...
> 

It doesn't. A zombie is, under Unix, a process that is waiting for its
parent to collect its exit status. Windows has no concept of a process
tree or process parentage at all. A child process under windows is what
we under Unix would call a thread in a program, requiring a lot of
library support to make it work. Such a model cannot have zombies in
the usual sense.

What you could check is if some process has been stuck in
uninterruptable IO for a long time. I have no idea how, but I read some
article somewhere about how one can parse the io-wait time of a process
(though I'm not sure it's the total time for the entire lifetime of the
process or just the current wait-time).

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson at op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231

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