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

[Craig Ringer]

James Devenish wrote:
> 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?

It is, I just messed up copying and pasting ;-) . The above should have 
been:

USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
jen       6442  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        Z    Jun15   0:00 
[gnome_segv2] <defunct>
jen       2648  0.0  0.5 21216 11068 ?       T    Jun15   0:05 gnome-panel


>>[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?

2648 is still in T state.

> 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!)?

Hmm. It seems to adjust the col widths dynamically:

[craig]$ ps -e --format "pid wchan" | egrep '(6442|2648)'
  6442 exit
  2648 finish_stop

> Normally, when 2648 dies, the zombie
> process 6442 should clear up. (If it doesn't => maybe kernel bug or
> init bug?)

Indeed. The issue being that 2648 just won't die. Neither of them is 
doing any harm, but ... well, it feels like I'm using WinNT again:

"die"
"no!"
"die NOW"
"Don't feel like it, go away"

--
Craig Ringer