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Kill all Zombie processes (Guaranteed!)

Terminal - Kill all Zombie processes (Guaranteed!)
kill -9 `ps -xaw -o state -o ppid | grep Z | grep -v PID | awk '{print $2}'`
2010-10-27 07:29:14
User: khashmeshab
Functions: awk grep kill
8
Up
Down
Kill all Zombie processes (Guaranteed!)

It identifies the parents of the Zombie processes and kill them. So the new parent of orphan Zombies will be the Init process and he is already waiting for reaping them. Be careful! It may also kill your useful processes just because they are not taking care and waiting for their children (bad parents!).

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Alternatives

There is 1 alternative - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
kill -9 `ps -xaw -o state -o pid | grep Z | grep -v PID | awk '{print $2}'`
2010-10-27 07:19:52
User: khashmeshab
Functions: awk grep kill
Tags: csh kill process FreeBSD zombie
1
Up
Down
Kill all Zombie processes if they accept it!

Tested on FreeBSD 8.1 and CSH. The scripts works correctly but the Zombies do not die! I hope it will run and function as expected in Linux and others.

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kill -9 `ps xawo state=,pid=|sed -n 's/Z //p'`
2010-10-27 07:38:07
User: AskApache
Functions: kill sed
Tags: csh kill process FreeBSD zombie
0
Up
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Kill all Zombie processes if they accept it!

just a leaner, smaller version. Love the original idea!

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
ps -xaw -o state,ppid | grep Z | grep -v PID | awk '{ print $2 }' | xargs kill -9
2013-01-09 04:21:54
User: terrywang
Functions: awk grep kill ps xargs
Tags: csh kill process FreeBSD zombie
-4
Up
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Kill all Zombie processes one-liner

Did some research and found the previous command wrong, we don't kill a zombie but its parent. Just made some modifcation to khashmeshab's command.

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Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

nice.. great idea

Comment by AskApache 134 weeks and 1 day ago

the ppid version is a bit too dangerous for me though..

Comment by AskApache 134 weeks and 1 day ago

@AskApache: Try it once. You will see it is not so dangerous. It even killed one of SSHD daemons in my remote server but I'm still connected to it without any problem!

Comment by khashmeshab 134 weeks and 1 day ago

Didnt work got this error not sure what it means

http://paste2.org/p/1058232

Comment by Bonster 134 weeks ago

@Bonster: What OS do you use? (uname -a)

Comment by khashmeshab 134 weeks ago

On Ubuntu 11.10, I had to omit the 1st ' - ' :

kill -9 `ps -xaw -o state -o ppid | grep Z | grep -v PID | awk '{print $2}'`

Warning: bad syntax, perhaps a bogus '-'? See /usr/share/doc/procps-3.2.7/FAQ

this works:

kill -9 `ps xaw -o state -o ppid | grep Z | grep -v PID | awk '{print $2}'`
Comment by cyba84 73 weeks and 1 day ago

I don't think mindlessly killing parent processes just to get rid of zombies is the way to go. This one-liner is certainly correct (as opposed to the original submission) but the big picture of this problem is still way off.

Comment by wejn 18 weeks and 6 days ago

Your point of view

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