68
I've Got 'Night Of The Living Dead' On My Homelab Server (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago by irmadlad@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

=> There are 90 zombie processes.

On one of my Homelab servers running Ubuntu Jammy, I always seem to get zombie processes. A quick check with ps -eo pid,ppid,stat,cmd | grep -w Z shows them all . It just bugs me. I shut down the server in the most nicest of ways I know how with sudo shutdown -h now but I always get zombie processes shown on start up.

Am I missing something? Do these show up on your servers? How do you deal with them besides just ignoring them if they are ?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] non_burglar@lemmy.world 13 points 5 months ago

Zombies that stick around for more than a few seconds indicate a signal problem in the parent process, where its init is stuck in the "wait" state, so the entry remains in the PID table.

It could be harmless, but it could become a problem if you need the resources. Curl shouldn't be doing this on its own.

[-] irmadlad@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

It could be harmless, but it could become a problem if you need the resources.

That's the thing. None of them are consuming resources. I guess I should just ignore them, but it irritates me when I start my server, to see zombie processes. Makes me think something is askew.

[-] jj4211@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Zombie processes do not use resources, well, a little, it's basically an entry describing how it exited.

The parent process is the thing keeping the zombie entry open. Killing it's parent should work if they bother you.

[-] non_burglar@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

Zombie processes do not use resources, well, a little, it's basically an entry describing how it exited.

Agreed, but a very poorly-written program having a hanging memory or disk write, or a file lock could become a problem, especially if hundreds or thousands of zombies are waiting for something.

[-] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago

disturbingly pervasive shuffling noises intensify

[-] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

that sounds like poor garbage collection in an application.

I've written software that had similar issues when writing to files and I failed to "close" the file after writing.

processes stay open, files stay open. 500 byte processes times 10000 orphaned process can make for a bad time.

this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2026
68 points (98.6% liked)

Selfhosted

62987 readers
1745 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Detailed Rules Post

  1. Be civil.

  2. No spam.

  3. Posts are to be related to self-hosting.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title.

  6. No trolling.

  7. Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details. Tags [CBH] or [AIP] are required, see the links in Rule 8 for details.

  8. AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post, and find example disclosures here.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
ruud@lemmy.world
Loki@lemmy.world
CannaVet@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
ayyy@sh.itjust.works
curbstickle@anarchist.nexus
curbstickle_lw@lemmy.world