scoonma Posted October 31, 2006 Report Share Posted October 31, 2006 Hi all, another problem on this system which I experienced more than once and constantly bugging me are two processes, which go zombie right after starting X. The first is the "menu" process, started by /etc/X11/xinit.d/menu, second is "Mod_Meta_L_Disa"(ble), started from the same directory. The bug first occurred in MDV 2006, and I began to compile GNOME on my own to help this. However, the effort was no full success, but version 2007 went fine at the beginning. Any tips for a workaround/fix on this one please? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted October 31, 2006 Report Share Posted October 31, 2006 what do you mean by "go zombie"? are they eating up CPU or RAM? or are they just sitting there idle? if they are just sitting idle that may be the intended action... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scoonma Posted November 1, 2006 Author Report Share Posted November 1, 2006 They turn into processes of status "Z" (from "ps -A x") and can by no means be deleted... At least I've not found no way by now (i.e. attempts like "kill -9" simply don't work). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted November 1, 2006 Report Share Posted November 1, 2006 If they aren't eating up system resources I would suggest leaving them be, they may be necessary processes that are spawned/part of some other program. In fact most of my research indicates that's what they are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scoonma Posted November 1, 2006 Author Report Share Posted November 1, 2006 That was exactly the problem under some conditions, but difficult to track down. Some application/process was eating up memory, but the output of "top" didn't help me to identify the evildoer. So I was suspecting the "zombies". With the last cooker update, they seem to be gone. But I wonder if the flaw is actually solved, as there's no process called "menu" at all now. Does it have to be like this with Gnome 2.16.1? Anyway, thx for your info! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ramfree17 Posted November 3, 2006 Report Share Posted November 3, 2006 would the pstree help? it should list the process genealogy but since those are already zombies then the parent is already 'reclaimed'. just a thought... ciao! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scoonma Posted November 3, 2006 Author Report Share Posted November 3, 2006 Thanks, "pstree" got me at least somewhere! Both "menu" and "Mod_Meta_L_Disa"(ble) are started by gnome-session. I also found that the output of "top" in a shell is probably misleading. However, gnome-system-monitor shows the correct memory usage! Regards, scoonma Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted November 6, 2006 Report Share Posted November 6, 2006 top isn't misleading. there are various ways to measure memory usage, because some processes will cache memory - so while not technically in use, it is holding data, although that data can be replaced as needed. So you end up with active RAM, and cached RAM. IIRC, top counts both of these in RAM usage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ramfree17 Posted November 7, 2006 Report Share Posted November 7, 2006 Thanks, "pstree" got me at least somewhere! Both "menu" and "Mod_Meta_L_Disa"(ble) are started by gnome-session. I also found that the output of "top" in a shell is probably misleading. However, gnome-system-monitor shows the correct memory usage! Regards, scoonma my bad. i got my process terminologies wrong. zombie processes are those that are waiting exit confirmation from the parent. i was thinking of orphaned processes since gnome-session is the culprit, you migh want to check with the gnome issue list if this is a handling bug. it does not hurt (that much) but this is an issue nonetheless. ciao! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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