[arch-general] Zombie Processes

[Andy Pieters]

Kevin Ott wrote:

> It doesn't make sense that zombie processes would take up anything more than a few bits (possibly a bit  more) somewhere if you understand what exactly they are. Zombie processes are just processes that have finished doing everything they need to do.  The only reason they're still around (even though they're not, the result of their execution is stored along with a few things and the process just sits idle) is because their parent process hasn't checked to "reap" the child process yet (hence the term "zombie  process", the process is actually dead, but it partially isn't treated as such since the parent still needs to get information from  it). Since the process isn't actually active it wouldn't make sense for it to be taking up CPU cycles (if it is given a cycle, it will just pass it off), memory (it's done executing, there's nothing left to store in memory except the result), locks (again, nothing is running if it's holding a lock there's a problem), or anything else of that nature.

Thank you Kevin that makes it perfectly clear to me :)