>>>>> "Alex" == Alex V Toropov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Alex> In what situation process becomes Zombie ? When a process exits, it can return an exit status code to its parent process. The parent process retrieves this exit status code by invoking the wait() system call. A zombie process is a process that has exited, but whose parent hasn't used wait() to get its exit status code yet. It isn't doing anything, it's just there in the list of processes, waiting to be wait()ed for, unable to really die until that happens. Eventually, even if the neglectful parent process never wait()s for it, it will go away, for this reason: When a parent process exits, init (process id 1) inherits all its child processes. And one of init's less well-known jobs is wait()ing for orphaned zombie processes. -- I get my monkeys for nothing and my chimps for free. http://www.clark.net/pub/hermit/