zombie and defunct

tp# top
last pid: 23639;  load averages:  0.00,  0.00,  0.00
                             up 13+06:57:13  13:53:54
65 processes:  1 running, 63 sleeping, 1 zombie
CPU states:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  0.0% system,  0.0% interrupt,  100% idle
Mem: 181M Active, 1535M Inact, 199M Wired, 79M Cache, 112M Buf, 4008K Free
Swap: 4096M Total, 88K Used, 4096M Free

wow, 1 zombie

first time I see this ‘zombie’

further work to see that zombie

ftp# ps -aux | grep Z
USER      PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ   RSS  TT  STAT STARTED      TIME COMMAND
root    24487  0.0  0.0     0     0  ??  Z     2:00PM   0:00.00 <defunct>

<defunct>

what was thta?

from here :

http://www.cts.wustl.edu/~allen/kill-defunct-process.html

Defunct processes are processes that have become corrupted in such a
way the no long can communicate (not really the right word, like
signal each other) with their parent or child process. So kill the
parent or child and 99% of the time (around here at least) the defunct
process will go away! No parent or child, your out of luck, or look
for a stuck automount.

Hmm….

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