[plug] the GNOME panel that just won't die

[James Devenish]

Hi Craig,

In message <40CE9D38.7020907 at postnewspapers.com.au>
on Tue, Jun 15, 2004 at 02:54:48PM +0800, Craig Ringer wrote:
> USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
> aja      28611  0.0  0.5 21196 10960 ?       S    09:12   0:03 gnome-panel
> jen       6442  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        Z    14:13   0:00 [gnome_segv2] <defunct>

I don't quite understand the appearance of 'aja' above. Is it 'jen'
who has the problem?

> [craig]$ ps -e --format "pid user ppid wchan cmd" | grep jen
>  6442 jen       2648 exit   [gnome_segv2] <defunct>
>  2648 jen          1 finish gnome-panel --sm-config-prefix 
> /gnome-panel-0iv5Wq/ --sm-client-id 
> 110a000004000107517969800000242930001 --profile default

So, we can see that process 6442 has disappeared but 2648 has not
acknowledged it. So, what is the state of process 2648? And is there a
way to get `ps` to show a wider column for 'wchan', so that you can see
it properly (that could help!)? Normally, when 2648 dies, the zombie
process 6442 should clear up. (If it doesn't => maybe kernel bug or
init bug?)