preap man page on SmartOS

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PREAP(1)							      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 by way of the wait(3C),
       waitid(2),  or  waitpid(3C) system call. In the normal course of system
       operation, zombies can occur, but are typically short-lived.  This  can
       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 can not exit for a very long time and
       thus leave zombies on the system. Since the operating  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(3C)
       for pid, if pid represents a defunct process.

       preap attempts 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.

USAGE
       Caution should be exercised when using the -F flag. Imposing  two  con‐
       trolling	 processes  on one victim process can lead to chaos. Safety is
       assured only if the primary controlling process, typically a  debugger,
       has  stopped  the victim process and the primary controlling process is
       doing nothing at the moment of application of the proc  tool  in	 ques‐
       tion.

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.

SEE ALSO
       proc(1),	  init(1M),   waitid(2),   wait(3C),   waitpid(3C),   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 are not
       reaped by the parent process. Otherwise, applying preap can damage  the
       parent process in unpredictable ways.

				 Jun 19, 2006			      PREAP(1)
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