ZMailer scheduler <zombie>'s appear in Linux 1.2.13

[James MacKinnon <jmack@phys.ualberta.ca>]

Hello,

I did a compile of our in-use production ZMailer (works great on Ultrix
and NeXT) to Linux 1.2.13 tonight, and discovered that the scheduler 
spawned subprocesses go <zombie> on me. Log file is uninformative.

Here are the basics (log starts and OS):
# more router
router: router daemon (2.99.10mea #1: Wed Sep 13 22:29:27 MDT 1995)
        started at Wed, 13 Sep 1995 22:56:40 -0700

# more scheduler 
scheduler: scheduler daemon (2.99.10mea #1: Wed Sep 13 22:30:35 MDT 1995)
        started at Wed, 13 Sep 1995 22:56:43 -0700

# cat /proc/version 
Linux version 1.2.13 (root@laddie) (gcc version 2.5.8) #2 Wed Aug 30 
00:51:15 MDT 1995

Hardware is a 486-DX4/100 Compaq944, 18MB ram, 50mb swap, loads of free disk.

After sending 1 message and receiving 1 message, the process stack looks
like:

root     10207  0.0  3.7  646  564  ?  S    22:56   0:00 /zmailer/bin/router -dk
root     10215  0.0  1.5  253  232  ?  S    22:56   0:00 /zmailer/bin/scheduler
root     10217  0.0  1.2  234  180  ?  S    22:56   0:00 /zmailer/bin/smtpserver
root     10244  0.0  0.0  249    0  ?  Z    22:59   0:00 (scheduler) <zombie>
root     10253  0.0  0.0  249    0  ?  Z    23:03   0:00 (scheduler) <zombie>
root     10255  0.0  0.0  249    0  ?  Z    23:03   0:00 (scheduler) <zombie>
root     10257  0.0  0.0  249    0  ?  Z    23:03   0:00 (scheduler) <zombie>
root     10259  0.0  0.0  249    0  ?  Z    23:03   0:00 (scheduler) <zombie>
root     10261  0.0  0.0  249    0  ?  Z    23:03   0:00 (scheduler) <zombie>
root     10263  0.0  0.0  249    0  ?  Z    23:03   0:00 (scheduler) <zombie>
root     10265  0.0  0.0  249    0  ?  Z    23:03   0:00 (scheduler) <zombie>
root     10267  0.0  0.0  249    0  ?  Z    23:03   0:00 (scheduler) <zombie>
root     10269  0.0  0.0  249    0  ?  Z    23:03   0:00 (scheduler) <zombie>
root     10271  0.0  0.0  249    0  ?  Z    23:03   0:00 (scheduler) <zombie>
root     10273  0.0  0.0  249    0  ?  Z    23:03   0:00 (scheduler) <zombie>
root     10275  0.0  0.0  249    0  ?  Z    23:03   0:00 (scheduler) <zombie>
root     10277  0.0  0.0  249    0  ?  Z    23:03   0:00 (scheduler) <zombie>
root     10312  0.0  0.0  253    0  ?  Z    23:09   0:00 (scheduler) <zombie>

Otherwise everything works just tickity-boo (router, delivery, mailboxes 
etc).

During the compile I had minor complaints about libmalloc duplicates,
and other small trivia, but nothing out of the ordinary platform
glitches one runs into. Full compile after fixes took only 18 min.

Anyone else run into <zombie>'s ? They just won't go away, and if traffic
increases, I'll see my stack get swallowed up :-( Anyone offer any ideas 
as to why, and how to get a fix?

Thanks,
--
James S. MacKinnon           Office: P-139 Avahd-Bhatia Physics Lab
Department of Physics        Voice : (403) 492-8226
University of Alberta        email : Jim.MacKinnon@Phys.UAlberta.CA
Edmonton, Canada T6G 2N5
        WWW:   http://www.phys.ualberta.ca/~jmack/jmack.html