I suspect the problem is with mixing CHLD signal handling with system.
You might try explicitly calling waitpid in the parent rather than using a signal handler.
Why does the child have to wait for the grandchild to finish? You could set SIGHUP to IGNORE, which should avoid killing the grandchild when the child exits, and use exec (or use nohup, for the lazy).

In reply to Re: rsh <defunct> processes appear when using fork and system calls by cdarke
in thread rsh <defunct> processes appear when using fork and system calls by whatwhat

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