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- Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.programmer
- Path: sparky!uunet!think.com!yale.edu!ira.uka.de!chx400!bernina!waldvoge
- From: waldvoge@nessie.cs.id.ethz.ch (Marcel Waldvogel)
- Subject: Re: What does a task with priority -1 mean?
- Message-ID: <1992Nov11.203247.29234@bernina.ethz.ch>
- Sender: news@bernina.ethz.ch (USENET News System)
- Organization: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, CH
- References: <1dmp94INNppe@uwm.edu> <1992Nov10.152955.21859@menudo.uh.edu>
- Distribution: usa
- Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 20:32:47 GMT
- Lines: 28
-
- In article <1992Nov10.152955.21859@menudo.uh.edu> sears@tree.egr.uh.edu writes:
- >In article <1dmp94INNppe@uwm.edu> xepo@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Scott R Violet)
- >writes:
- [stuff deleted]
- >=>After that if I do a 'ps -aux' I notice that there is a extra -1 task
- >=>running under root. What could cause this problem? And, I found out
- >=>that it isn't a good idea to try an kill them...
- >=> -Scott Violet (xepo@csd4.csd.uwm.edu)
- >
- >A process with a PID of -1 (also stated as <mnach-task>) is really a zombied
- >process. A zombie doesn't not really cause any harm to the system, except
- >that it consumes 1 slot in the process table, of which there is a finite
- >number of slots. When you run out of process slots, you will crash.
-
- Yes, there is a finite amount of them, but it's only limited by the
- memory you have (it's not an arbitraty limit such as '128 processes').
-
- >Btw, the zombies can not be "killed" (even will kill -9). Don't even bother
- >to attempt it. But if you do, be prepared to reboot from a panic :-)
-
- If you try to kill processes with negative PIDs, you won't kill them,
- but you will kill the process group with the corresponding positive
- ID. As a speciale case, -1 refers to every process owned by you (root:
- every process), except the process sending that signal (but, of course
- including its parent processes, such as Stuart or Terminal).
- Therefore, you won't get the expected result when killing -1.
-
- -Marcel
-