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“On Unix and Unix-like computer operating systems, a zombie process or defunct process is a process that has completed execution but still has an entry in the process table, this entry being still needed to allow the process that started the zombie process to read its exit status. The term zombie process derives from the common definition of zombie—an undead person. In the term’s colorful metaphor, the child process has died but has not yet been reaped.” as stated in wikepedia article.

So u shud be now thinking of how to know which are zombie processes as there are plenty of processes running by system !!!

Here is the procedure to check which are the zombie processes. U can use the below commands for finding:

Use top command which shows how many zombie process are running and which are they can be get by seeing the STAT column which reads a ‘Z’

Or

Use the ps command as shown below which will display the PID:

# ps aux | awk '{ print $8 " " $2 }' | grep -w Z

Output:

Z 8751

Now you can kill these process using the PID:

kill -9 8751

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Filed under: Linux Tips