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You can't kill a zombie because it is already dead.
It isn't unusual to see a few zombie processes in your process table over time.
However, if you see multiple zombies all from the same parent it typically means there is an issue with the application or some resource it is trying to obtain. You should therefore focus your efforts on trying to find out what the issue is with the application and not waste time on the zombies themselves as they are a symptom of a larger issue.
By the way - sometimes if you can find the parent of a zombie and kill that process then sometimes it will clean up the zombies when it dies. Note you should always do progressive kill i.e. kill -1 <pid>, kill -15 <pid> and only as last resort kill -9 <pid>. Kill -9 tells a process to die without doing any cleanup so can cause tie up of resources or leave bits of itself in tables.
well,
if you have hundreds of zombies they will fill up your process table
and you won't be able to do anything.
your shell will say "too many processes" typically.
well,
if you have hundreds of zombies they will fill up your process table
and you won't be able to do anything.
your shell will say "too many processes" typically.
Which is why you should focus on what is causing them. If you get too many processes chances are you're going to have to reboot to clear everything anyway.
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