preap(1)




NAME

     preap - force a defunct process to be reaped by its parent


SYNOPSIS

     preap [-F] pid...


DESCRIPTION

     A defunct (or zombie) process is one whose exit  status  has
     yet  to  be  reaped by its parent. The exit status is reaped
     via the wait(2), waitid(2), or waitpid(2)  system  call.  In
     the  normal  course  of system operation, zombies may occur,
     but are typically short-lived. This may happen if  a  parent
     exits  without  having reaped the exit status of some or all
     of its children. In that case, those children are reparented
     to  PID  1.  See  init(1M),  which  periodically  reaps such
     processes.

     An irresponsible parent process may not exit for a very long
     time and thus leave zombies on the system. Since the operat-
     ing system destroys  nearly  all  components  of  a  process
     before  it  becomes  defunct,  such defunct processes do not
     normally impact system operation. However, they do consume a
     small amount of system memory.

     preap forces the parent of the process specified by  pid  to
     waitid(2) for pid, if pid represents a defunct process.

     preap  will  attempt  to  prevent  the  administrator   from
     unwisely  reaping a child process which might soon be reaped
     by the parent, if:

        o  The process is a child of init(1M).

        o  The parent process is stopped and might  wait  on  the
           child when it is again allowed to run.

        o  The process has been defunct for less than one minute.


OPTIONS

     The following option is supported:

     -F    Forces the parent to reap the child, overriding safety
           checks.


OPERANDS

     The following operand is supported:

     pid   Process ID list.


EXIT STATUS

     The following exit  values  are  returned  by  preap,  which
     prints the exit status of each target process reaped:
     0     Successfully operation.

     non-zero
           Failure, such as no such process,  permission  denied,
           or invalid option.


ATTRIBUTES

     See attributes(5) for descriptions of the  following  attri-
     butes:

     ____________________________________________________________
    |       ATTRIBUTE TYPE        |       ATTRIBUTE VALUE       |
    |_____________________________|_____________________________|
    | Availability                | SUNWesu (32-bit)            |
    |_____________________________|_____________________________|
    |                             | SUNWesxu (64-bit)           |
    |_____________________________|_____________________________|


SEE ALSO

     proc(1), init(1M), wait(2), waitid(2), waitpid(2),  proc(4),
     attributes(5)


WARNINGS

     preap should be applied sparingly and only in situations  in
     which  the  administrator  or  developer  has confirmed that
     defunct processes will not be reaped by the parent  process.
     Otherwise,  applying  preap may damage the parent process in
     unpredictable ways.


Man(1) output converted with man2html