Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Question regarding <defunct> processes
Keywords: Fork,<defunct> processes
Message-ID: <12587@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 13 Apr 90 21:02:07 GMT
References: <8716@hubcap.clemson.edu> <413@servio.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 10

In article <413@servio.UUCP> penneyj@servio.UUCP (D. Jason Penney) writes:
>Oh, the astonishing things that happen in pUnyx.  What you're struggling with
>is the infamous "SIGCHLD" problem.  To allow a process to complete its
>death, you must trap the SIGCHLD signal and then do a wait() to clear it.

Wrong.
It is not necessary to trap SIGCHLD to reap zombies.
In fact I don't recommend relying on weird SIGCLD/SIGCHLD semantics
for any purpose whatsoever.
I emailed the original requestor a proper explanation and solutions.