Vinayak Hegde wrote:
It is not possible to kill a zombie. Because a zombie is already dead. It is only hanging around as the parent process has not called wait() or any of it's variants on it. So all the memory and flile descriptors are closed by the kernel but the process table entry remains.
:) cheers Vinayak
You are absolutely spot on. Jargon.com defines a zombie as follows:
zombie n. 1. [Unix] A process that has died but has not yet relinquished its process table slot (because the parent process hasn't executed a `wait(2)' for it yet). These can be seen in `ps(1)' listings occasionally. Compare orphan.
This leaves us with two possibilities: either a) the original poster's question was self-contradictory and therefore meaningless or b) the original poster did not use the word in this precise technical sense but meant something like "runaway process" or "rogue process", in which case some of the answers given to him here may be relevant.
I am inclined towards b). In either case, it is an interesting problem of semantics!