Re: Check if forked process is dead

Looks like to me that you fork a process that starts to do something (like sleep), but then the main process immediately dies. makes a zombie.

Comment on Re: Check if forked process is dead

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Re^2: Check if forked process is dead by petr999 (Acolyte) on Mar 02, 2011 at 21:50 UTC
No, forked process is just exits	[reply]
Re^3: Check if forked process is dead by Marshall (Canon) on Mar 05, 2011 at 02:30 UTC
I think others have explained this. Basically when the child exits, the OS keeps track of it's exit status until you check it. This is done so that you can find out what happened to it..did it work ok? Was there an error that caused it to abend? If you don't check and clear the status of the child termination, then this status hangs around forever in zombie land. It doesn't consume CPU mips, but it does occupy a place in the process table.	[reply]