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Bug 1101976

Summary:	gnome-shell keeps defunct (zombie) processes of terminated applications
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7	Reporter:	David Jaša <djasa>
Component:	glib2	Assignee:	Colin Walters <walters>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Desktop QE <desktop-qa-list>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	7.0	CC:	cozzyd, djasa, elliot.li.tech, kahing, mclasen, mdomonko
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2020-12-08 14:20:13 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description David Jaša 2014-05-28 09:35:49 UTC

Description of problem:
when user quits application (ctrl-q or similar), gnome-shell sometimes doesn't allow the process to properly terminate so defunct (zombie) processes start appearing in process list. This may harm operation of some apps so gnome-shell shouldn't do it.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
gnome-shell-3.8.4-31.el7.x86_64

How reproducible:
not sure

Steps to Reproduce:
1. use gnome for extended period of time, start apps, quit apps
2.
3.

Actual results:
zombie processes start appearing:
0 S djasa     8675 15067  0  80   0 - 28160 pipe_w 11:31 pts/2    00:00:00 grep defunct
0 Z djasa    14182 17530  0  80   0 -     0 exit   kvě26 ?       00:00:37 [hexchat] <defunct>
0 Z djasa    19736 17530  0  80   0 -     0 exit   kvě26 ?       00:08:57 [evolution] <defunct>
0 Z djasa    27050 26953  0  80   0 -     0 exit   kvě27 ?       00:00:00 [gnome-shell-ext] <defunct>
F S UID        PID  PPID  C PRI  NI ADDR SZ WCHAN  STIME TTY        TIME CMD
0 S djasa    17530 17292  1  80   0 - 506061 poll_s kvě20 ?      149:44 /usr/bin/gnome-shell


Expected results:
no zombie processes with gnome-shell parent should be around

Additional info:

Comment 1 Cosmin Deaconu 2014-09-29 20:00:39 UTC

This is just a workaround, but using 

killall -HUP gnome-shell 

seems to kill zombies (while preserving running programs).

Comment 6 Ka-Hing cheung 2016-04-29 18:43:33 UTC

The workaround is not ideal because it kills gnome-shell and often messes up multi-monitor setups.