Video: https://youtu.be/6VH_aDNF6JU
Source Code → github.com/bahamas10/ysap/tree/main/code/2026-04-22-zombie-process
Explanation of what a zombie process in Linux is, how to create one and what happens if there is one.
Video: https://youtu.be/6VH_aDNF6JU
Source Code → github.com/bahamas10/ysap/tree/main/code/2026-04-22-zombie-process
Explanation of what a zombie process in Linux is, how to create one and what happens if there is one.
@thingsiplay Stop their parent process and the zombie will go under init, then init will stop them.
That’s what the video explains as well. Killing the parents will make init adopt and kill the children in the process. Problem is, that you might not want to stop / kill the parent process, depending on what you are doing. One should be very careful of doing so.
@thingsiplay Yes, you are right. I think you could trace the parent, by a gdb, and then execute a wait() in its name.
@thingsiplay Sorry you might right! In this case, I would debug the parent process and I would execute the wait() syscalls in its name, but it is hardly autimatizable and probably many people can not do that. Thanks the info!
To be clear, merely stopping the parent (SIGSTOP) will not do the job. You have to kill or otherwise end it.