XK0-005 · Question #276
An administrator is troubleshooting to determine why backups are failing on a particular server. The administrator runs the ps command and analyzes the following output. The administrator runs kill…
The correct answer is B. The backup process is a zombie process, and the system needs to be rebooted. If a process persists after being terminated with kill -9, it indicates a zombie process, which is a defunct child process that has terminated but still has an entry in the process table because its parent has not reaped its exit status. The most reliable way to clear stubborn…
Question
An administrator is troubleshooting to determine why backups are failing on a particular server. The administrator runs the ps command and analyzes the following output. The administrator runs kill -9 10112 yet the process remains. Which of the following BEST describes the issue and how to fix it?
Options
- AThe backup process is still running and needs to be killed with kill -9 --force 10112.
- BThe backup process is a zombie process, and the system needs to be rebooted.
- CThe backup process is out of memory, and more memory needs to be added to the system.
- DThe backup process is using 100% of system resources and needs to be rescheduled with renice.
How the community answered
(23 responses)- A4% (1)
- B78% (18)
- C13% (3)
- D4% (1)
Why each option
If a process persists after being terminated with `kill -9`, it indicates a zombie process, which is a defunct child process that has terminated but still has an entry in the process table because its parent has not reaped its exit status. The most reliable way to clear stubborn zombie processes, especially if their parent is unresponsive or `init`, is to reboot the system.
There is no `kill -9 --force` command; `kill -9` is already the most forceful way to terminate a process, and it does not affect zombie processes.
A process that remains after `kill -9` is a zombie process (defunct). This occurs when a child process terminates, but its parent process has not yet read its exit status, leaving an entry in the process table. Since `kill -9` cannot force a zombie to disappear, and zombies consume no resources other than a process table entry, a system reboot is typically the only way to clear them if the parent process is not available to reap them.
While a process might be out of memory, this specific symptom (process remaining after `kill -9`) points to a zombie state, not an active process struggling with memory.
A process using 100% of system resources would still respond to `kill -9` by terminating; rescheduling with `renice` would adjust priority but not fix a stuck process that won't terminate.
Concept tested: Linux zombie processes and `kill -9` behavior
Source: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/signal.7.html
Topics
Community Discussion
No community discussion yet for this question.