A systems administrator identifies multiple processes in a zombie state. Which of the following signals would be best for the administrator to send to the PPID?

The correct answer is A. SIGTERM. A zombie process has already exited but remains in the process table because its parent has not called wait() to collect its exit status. The best resolution is to send SIGTERM to the parent process (PPID), which causes the parent to terminate gracefully. Once the parent exits…

System Management

Question

A systems administrator identifies multiple processes in a zombie state. Which of the following signals would be best for the administrator to send to the PPID?

Options

ASIGTERM
BSIGHUP
CSIGQUIT
DSIGSTOP

How the community answered

(57 responses)

A
84% (48)
B
7% (4)
C
4% (2)
D
5% (3)

Explanation

A zombie process has already exited but remains in the process table because its parent has not called wait() to collect its exit status. The best resolution is to send SIGTERM to the parent process (PPID), which causes the parent to terminate gracefully. Once the parent exits, the zombie children are re-parented to PID 1 (init/systemd), which automatically calls wait() and cleans them up. SIGHUP (B) asks a process to reload its configuration and is less likely to trigger cleanup. SIGQUIT (C) produces a core dump. SIGSTOP (D) only pauses the parent without resolving the zombies.

Topics

#Process management#Linux signals#Zombie processes

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