[GoLUG] Linux Campfire Tales at GoLUG, 4/3/2024

[Steve Litt]

Ron / BCLUG said on Fri, 5 Apr 2024 10:22:08 -0700

>Steve Litt wrote on 2024-04-02 19:37:
>
>> GoLUG meeting  
>
>I'm curious how you (Steve) dealt with the zombie processes - were you 
>able to clear those up without rebooting?

Still working on it, but I think I have a handle on it, based on
killing parents of zombies.

>Also, it seems the menu system was the source of the problem (if I 
>recall from a glance at your `ps` output).

UMENU is coded badly such that under certain circumstances it leaves
zombies. I need to find the circumstances (symptom reproduction) and
fix the problem.

>
>Have you investigated how it's spawning the applications?  I think
>there could be something in there that's the root of the zombie
>apocalypse.

:-) It's on my todo list.

UMENU2 isn't the major problem though. The major problem is using dmenu
to spawn a CLI program. Doing this not only creates zombies, but it
totally messes with a lot of current and future GUI windows. My thought
at this point is to change my dmenu shellscripts so they doublefork
what they run, thereby making PID1 the parent. PID1 reaps zombies.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21