Zombie Program?

[Minarwan]

Many thanks for this response Peter (and also Ian).
I was honestly scared when I read the word last night :)

It looks like I am still pretty much thinking in Windows way. :D
So I don't have to worry about it then.

Cheers,
Min

Peter Garrett wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:32:11 +1000
> Minarwan <rodinia at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> But when I quit Firefox, then I started it again and visited other 
>> websites, the Zombie process didn't come up. For a reason I don't know, 
>> that particular forum made my computer running a Zombie process.
>>
>> Anyway, I found out the way how to kill them from this website:
>> http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/killing-zombie-process.html
> 
> Actually, zombies are pretty harmless :)
> 
> As I understand it, they are processes that get left behind when their
> parent process dies and doesn't clean up. The reason they are hard to
> "kill" is that the parent process would need to be killed - but the parent
> no longer exists. So the zombie is neither running nor dead - hence
> "undead" as in "zombie" ... ( this explanation is probably horribly flawed
> from a technical point of view, but you get the general idea.. )
> 
> So: if a process was spawned by firefox ( a plugin, say), and becomes a
> zombie, it will not disappear until firefox is restarted, or perhaps until
> firefox is stopped at least .
> 
> I don't actually see how a zombie process can use resources - it isn't
> doing anything :-) Experts please correct me if I am wrong...
> 
> Peter
>