Programs which are 'defunct'

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?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PsypherPunk

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

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have you tried "kill -9"?

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..."

look for the parent process and

Code:

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kill -9 pid

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