Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!pacbell!sactoh0!spked!tdl!raulin
From: raulin@tdl.UUCP (Raulin Olivera)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: for(;;) fork();
Summary: Zombie processes that wouldn't die
Message-ID: <112@tdl.UUCP>
Date: 30 Mar 89 15:59:19 GMT
References: <2464@netmbx.UUCP>
Organization: CA State Controllers
Lines: 26

In article <2464@netmbx.UUCP>, blume@netmbx.UUCP (Heiko Blume) writes:
> i recently caused some bad load plus angry root on this machine 
> (286 xenix 2.2.1) because i compiled the wrong thing by chance.
> it was the common process well
> main() {
> 	for (;;) fork();
> }
> which, of course, caused the no more processes message. i thought
> 'no problem', hung up the phone and redialed. the beasts were still
> running ! and it was impossible to kill them because kill seems
> to be too slow (one syscall for each pid) to that effect that the
> forkers had enough time to spawn again before all of em got the signal.
> the machine had to be rebooted.
> the question is: why did they survive the logout ? they were not nohup.
> (don't try this if you can't reboot, it's a real pain for the machine).
> perhaps they could have been killed if the kill would run at top priority ?




Did you try useing a kill 0?  It is supposed to kill everything that
you initiated.  You might add the nice to raise the priority.  As far
as not dying I suggest that you check the HUPCL settings in gettydefs.


		=Ralo->