That code is buggy. Here it is in a package with a dummy new function, a warn statement to tell us when the reaper is running, and the line that checks if we're running under Linux commented out (since I'm testing it on Linux): 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $nd = NDTest->new;
$nd->Bind;

warn "My PID is $$\n";

foreach my $i (1..10)
{
  if (!fork())
  {
    # Child
    sleep(1);
    exit($i);
  }
  sleep(2);
}

package NDTest;

sub new {
  my $class = shift;
  my $self = {};
  $self->{mode} = 'fork';
  bless $self,$class;
}

sub SigChildHandler {
    my $self = shift; my $ref = shift;
    return undef if $self->{'mode'} ne 'fork'; # Don't care for childs
+.
#    return 'IGNORE' if $^O eq 'linux'; # We get zombies on Linux othe
+rwise
    my $reaper;
    sub {
    warn "Running reaper.\n";
        $$ref = wait;
        $SIG{'CHLD'} = $reaper;
    };
}

sub Bind ($) {
    my $self = shift;
    my $fh;
    my $child_pid;

    my $reaper = $self->SigChildHandler(\$child_pid);
    $SIG{'CHLD'} = $reaper if $reaper;
}

[download]
That creates 10 children fairly slowly. Let's see how many are reaped: 
[sgifford@sghome pa1]$ perl /tmp/t107
My PID is 18286
Running reaper.
Use of uninitialized value in scalar assignment at /tmp/t107 line 37.

[download]
That doesn't look promising. So what happened to the other 9 processes? 
$ ps -ef |grep 18286
sgifford 18286 16547  0 14:02 pts/0    00:00:00 perl /tmp/t107
sgifford 18288 18286  0 14:02 pts/0    00:00:00 [perl <defunct>]
sgifford 18289 18286  0 14:02 pts/0    00:00:00 [perl <defunct>]
sgifford 18292 18286  0 14:02 pts/0    00:00:00 [perl <defunct>]
sgifford 18295 18286  0 14:02 pts/0    00:00:00 [perl <defunct>]
sgifford 18298 18286  0 14:02 pts/0    00:00:00 [perl <defunct>]
sgifford 18301 18286  0 14:02 pts/0    00:00:00 [perl <defunct>]
sgifford 18303 18212  0 14:03 pts/20   00:00:00 grep 18286

[download]
Yup. Zombies. Just like you're seeing.

I think that the only problem with this code is a typo. If we add a line below my $reaper;, saying $reaper =, assigning the sub ref to $reaper (which is what I believe the author intended) the problem goes away. 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $nd = NDTest->new;
$nd->Bind;

warn "My PID is $$\n";
foreach my $i (1..10)
{
  if (!fork())
  {
    # Child
    sleep(1);
    exit($i);
  }
  sleep(2);
}

package NDTest;

sub new {
  my $class = shift;
  my $self = {};
  $self->{mode} = 'fork';
  bless $self,$class;
}

sub SigChildHandler {
    my $self = shift; my $ref = shift;
    return undef if $self->{'mode'} ne 'fork'; # Don't care for childs
+.
#    return 'IGNORE' if $^O eq 'linux'; # We get zombies on Linux othe
+rwise
    my $reaper;
    $reaper = 
    sub {
    warn "Running reaper.\n";
        $$ref = wait;
        $SIG{'CHLD'} = $reaper;
    };
}

sub Bind ($) {
    my $self = shift;
    my $fh;
    my $child_pid;

    my $reaper = $self->SigChildHandler(\$child_pid);
    $SIG{'CHLD'} = $reaper if $reaper;
}

[download]
$ perl /tmp/t107
My PID is 18322
Running reaper.
Running reaper.
Running reaper.
Running reaper.
Running reaper.
Running reaper.
Running reaper.
Running reaper.
Running reaper.
Running reaper.

[download]

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Net::Daemon and zombies by sgifford
in thread Net::Daemon and zombies by shushu

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