Re: [Exim] Zombie processes with Exim 4.30

Hi Philip, on Mon, 22 Dec 2003 11:34:37 +0000 (GMT) you wrote:

[zombie processes on lightly loaded machines]
> The Exim daemon only reaps completed subprocesses when it wakes up for
> some other reason. So, if your system is lightly loaded, it won't be
> waking up very often, and the last subprocess it created may hang around
> as a zombie for a while. You should only see a small number (usually no
> more than one, but I guess more is possible) of such processes, and if
> you prod the daemon (telnet to port 25 or wait for the next queue runner
> time), they should go away.

Aha. I have indeed not seen any more than one at any time, and this makes
sense in conjunction with my running of "exiwhat" cleaning up the zombie.

> > a zombie process has appeared on my desktop machine since lunchtime
> > today, which has done absolutely nothing except an hourly queue run
> > (on an empty queue) all afternoon, it hasn't even processed a single
> > mail.
> Did the zombie remain after a queue run? If so, then there is something
> odd going on.

Well, I can't say for certain. There wasn't any activity going on at the
machine all afternoon, so I was assuming it had been there all afternoon
(and hence survived several queue runs). But I suppose it's possible that
something caused a subprocess to be spawned subsequent to the last queue
run. Let's not worry about it too much: I'll keep an eye on it and let you
know if I see any zombies which persist beyond queue runs/daemon prodding.


(I can only wonder what a non-technical user stumbling across discussions
like this must think, with all this talk of prodding demons and killing
zombies ;)

Thanks,


Tim