[Lynx-dev] lynx processes, please clean up after your children ; -)

[Thorsten Glaser]

Hi,

prodded by an IRC snippet I’ll reproduce below, I just had a look:

address@hidden:~ $ ps x | fgrep lynx
17739 p7  ZW+     0:00.00 (lynx)
 4010 p7  I+      1:08.53 lynx

These are probably spawned by DNS. Please add the appropriate
wait*() calls to immediately reap them, and SIGCHLD handling.


06:20 < waressearcher2> I have 23 processes "[lynx] <defunct>" and they
                        consume 30% of my RAM its 300MB, how to remove
                        them ? they seem like zombie and I tryed to use
                        "kill -s SIGCHILD parentID" but it doesn't work,
                        how to solve it without rebooting ? looks like
                        they are all childs of normal lynx processes, I
                        don't want to kill normal ones, I have dozens lynx
                        open with
06:20 < waressearcher2>  web sites in screen and some of them have these
                        "[lynx] <defunct>", so I want to get rid of those
                        "defunct" ones
06:24 < waressearcher2> I don't know what are they, they just accumulated
                        over time, my system has 135 days uptime, and
                        there is only one "screen" run on it with 90 bash
                        consoles and I have 30 lynx processes and 24
                        <defunc> lynx processes, the total RAM is 1GB,
                        initially when I booted that system I had more
                        than 900MB free but little by little I 680MB
                        maximum and that is
06:24 < waressearcher2>  because of those <defunc> processes, I need to
                        get rid of them
10:00 < RadoQ> why don't you just "kill -KILL" them?
10:00 < RadoQ> why SIGCHILD?
10:01 < RadoQ> maybe you started those in background with "&" and now they
               sleep.
10:04 < waressearcher2> kill -KILL not working
10:06 < waressearcher2> that is what pstree shows:
10:06 < waressearcher2>   |   |   `-lynx,16813
http://www.google.com/search?q=annulment&sourceid=opera&num=0&ie=utf-8&oe=u
tf-8
10:06 < waressearcher2>   |   |       `-(lynx,6843)
10:06 < RadoQ> lynx normally doesn't spawn.
10:06 < waressearcher2> I'm trying "kill -KILL 6843" and it doesn't work,
                        what is that second "lynx,6843" process ?
10:07 < RadoQ> you called some external helper which died unluckily.
10:07 < waressearcher2> I run one lynx and opened google then one website
                        from the list and now there are two lynx processes
                        when one is defunc, why ?
10:07 < waressearcher2> RadoQ: so why it haven't been cleaned by parent ?
10:08 < RadoQ> waressearcher2, try with default config (rename .lynxrc and
               lynx.cfg when you changed it).
10:08 < waressearcher2> RadoQ: you use "SIGCHILD" to tell parent to clean
                        up for their children that way all zombie can be
                        killed
11:44 < ivanshmakov> waressearcher2: But if the parent has somehow “lost
                     track” of that particular child, – SIGCHILD will
                     essentially be a no-op.


In this specific case, the parent probably did not lose access to
them, so, reaping is the correct fix.

On MirBSD, I only ever get one child process, though… he must be
using GNU/Linux or a similar inferiour OS ☺

bye,
//mirabilos
-- 
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