Re: [cobalt-security] Defunct

["David Seaton" <david@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

<defunct> is actually referred to as a Zombie process.
I'm not sure the exact details, but what it is, is a process that has been spun-off and has completed, however the calling program
(in this case apache calling your counter.cgi) doesn't give the OS the all clear to remove from memory.
So the program (counter.cgi) remains in a Zombie state. aka <defunct>

What I've found is in the Apache config, the MaxRequestsPerChild is set to something like 30000.
The MaxRequestsPerChild is designed to reload the child processes after X many of requests. This was designed to remove issues with
children having small memory leaks,. which could build up after a while.
When setting it to something more reasonable like 30 or 50 the child is reloaded and will naturally remove the <defunct> cgi's. Thus
removing the need for the crontab (although of course a creative solution).

There you go, a little history and suggestive administration. How did I do?


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Wai Chong, Wong" <waichong@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <cobalt-security@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2004 4:07 AM
Subject: [cobalt-security] Defunct


Anyone know <defunct> process keep on happening raq 550?

Anyway to tackle this?
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