Re: [VANILLA-LIST:2174] daemonII crashing on linux

[Dave Ahn <ahn@vec.wfubmc.edu>]

On Tue, Mar 23, 1999 at 10:54:28AM -0500, David Swasey wrote:
> 
> Continuum's process table was full of zombies.  The server wasn't
> dealing with child processes the way SysV expects.  One source of this
> problem, update.c, was fixed by Dave Ahn (& I assume intergrated into
> continuum) last night.

Yeah.  The same problem also existed in newstartd.c.  It has to do with
the fact that SysV signals behavior on modern OS's (Solaris, IRIX) seems
to have changed to follow POSIX behavior where a child process would
become a zombie if it terminates while the parent does not wait for it
by default.

update.c has been fixed.  newstartd.c also has a fix, but the fix may
conflict on some older systems that have SysV signals with an incompatible
sigaction call (which is a POSIX thing).  By default, the newstartd.c
fix is turned off.  If you see zombie processes, you can edit the file
and #define REAPER_HANDLER at around line 111 and see if the fix is
compatible with your system.  I suspect that if this fix works on at
least several platforms, it will be changed to be used by default or
as an autodetected configure option.  I know for a fact that this fix
does not work under IRIX.

-- 
Dave Ahn <ahn@vec.wfubmc.edu>        |  "When you were born, you cried and the
                                     |  world rejoiced.  Try to live your life
Virtual Endoscopy Center             |  so that when you die, you will rejoice
Wake Forest Univ. School of Medicine |  and the world will cry."  -1/2 jj^2