Programs which are 'defunct'

[PsypherPunk]

Occasionally if a program exits abnormally a quick 'ps -e' turns up an entry which reads, for instance 'k3b <defunct>'.

Is there any way to get rid of this entry as it prohibits the program from being restarted? i can't kill it as either a normal user or root, it just sits there. So far only a reboot has managed to clear it. How should it be done?

[spoon!]

i can't kill it as either a normal user or root

have you tried "kill -9"?

[PsypherPunk]

Yup, no different behaviour.

Though reading further it's seems they're Zombie processes and to get rid of them you must kill the parent that spawned them.

"t3h 3v1l, its too much..."

[aaron.d]

look for the parent process and

kill -9 pid