How to kill zombie process

Question

I launched my program in the foreground  a daemon program   and then I killed it with kill -9  but I get a zombie remaining and I m not able to kill it with kill -9  How to kill a zombie process   If the zombie is a dead process  already killed   how I remove it from the output of ps aux   root OpenWrt    anyprogramd  amp  root OpenWrt    ps aux   grep anyprogram  1163 root      2552 S    anyprogramd  1167 root      2552 S    anyprogramd  1169 root      2552 S    anyprogramd  1170 root      2552 S    anyprogramd 10101 root       944 S    grep anyprogram root OpenWrt    pidof anyprogramd 1170 1169 1167 1163 root OpenWrt    kill -9 1170 1169 1167 1163 root OpenWrt    ps aux  grep anyprogram  1163 root         0 Z     anyprogramd  root OpenWrt    kill -9 1163 root OpenWrt    ps aux  grep anyprogram  1163 root         0 Z     anyprogramd

User · Answer

Sometimes the parent ppid cannot be killed  hence kill the zombie pid kill -9   ps -A -ostat pid   awk    zZ    print  2

User · Answer

I tried   kill -9   ps -A -ostat ppid   grep -e   zZ    awk    print  2       and it works for me

User · Answer

You can clean up a zombie process by killing its parent process with the following command  kill -HUP   ps -A -ostat ppid   awk     zZ    print  2

User · Answer

I tried   ps aux   grep -w Z     returns the zombies pid ps o ppid  returned pid from previous command      returns the parent kill -1  the parent id from previous command    this will work

User · Answer

Found it at http   www linuxquestions org questions suse-novell-60 howto-kill-defunct-processes-574612   2  Here a great tip from another user  Thxs Bill Dandreta   Sometimes  kill -9  lt pid gt    will not kill a process  Run  ps -xal   the 4th field is the parent process  kill all of a zombie s parents and the zombie dies   Example  4 0 18581 31706 17 0 2664 1236 wait S   0 00 sh -c  usr bin gcc -fomit-frame-pointer -O -mfpmat 4 0 18582 18581 17 0 2064 828 wait S   0 00  usr i686-pc-linux-gnu gcc-bin 3 3 6 gcc -fomit-fr 4 0 18583 18582 21 0 6684 3100 - R   0 00  usr lib gcc-lib i686-pc-linux-gnu 3 3 6 cc1 -quie   18581  18582  18583 are zombies -  kill -9 18581 18582 18583   has no effect   kill -9 31706   removes the zombies

User · Answer

A zombie is already dead  so you cannot kill it   To clean up a zombie  it must be waited on by its parent  so killing the parent should work to eliminate the zombie    After the parent dies  the zombie will be inherited by pid 1  which will wait on it and clear its entry in the process table    If your daemon is spawning children that become zombies  you have a bug   Your daemon should notice when its children die and wait on them to determine their exit status   An example of how you might send a signal to every process that is the parent of a zombie  note that this is extremely crude and might kill processes that you do not intend   I do not recommend using this sort of sledge hammer      Don t do this   Incredibly risky sledge hammer  kill   ps -A -ostat ppid   awk    zZ    amp  amp   a  2     print  2

[linux] How to kill zombie process

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