Bug 141484

Summary:	Kernel 2.6.9 zombie creation when killing debugee
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	André Johansen <andrejoh>
Component:	kernel	Assignee:	Dave Jones <davej>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:	Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	3	CC:	josh.carlson, pfrields, wtogami
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	2.6.12-1.1372_FC3	Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2005-08-03 08:15:18 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description André Johansen 2004-12-01 15:03:45 UTC

When debugging a threaded program with TotalView 
(http://www.etnus.com/), killing the program from the debugger after 
threads have been created creates zombie processes. 
 
This does not happen on the FC2 2.6.8 kernels. 
It also happens on the 2.6.9 FC2 kernel, so is not specific to FC3. 
 
This seems to not happen when debugging with GDB. 
 
I'm guessing that this could be due to some ptrace changes in the 
2.6.9 kernel.

Comment 1 André Johansen 2004-12-01 15:14:45 UTC

This has happened on two similar machines, one running FC2 and one 
FC3.  These are old dual P3@1GHz Dell rack machines. 
 
Kernels tested with the bug: 
kernel-smp-2.6.9-1.667 (FC3) 
kernel-smp-2.6.9-1.681_FC3 
kernel-smp-2.6.9-1.6_FC2 
 
Kernels without the bug: 
kernel-smp-2.6.8-1.521 (FC2) 
 
I'll try the working 2.6.8 kernel on the FC3 machine.

Comment 2 André Johansen 2004-12-01 15:33:07 UTC

With the 2.6.8 FC2 kernel on the FC3 machine, the problem is gone.

Comment 3 Dave Jones 2005-01-14 07:24:53 UTC

fixed in the 2.6.10 updates ?

Comment 4 André Johansen 2005-01-14 14:06:39 UTC

With kernel-smp-2.6.10-1.741_FC3, TotalView is still unable to kill the 
process properly (they end up as zombies), but exiting TotalView now removes 
the zombies (which is an improvement). 
 
So, better, but still not good -- you can't restart the program in the 
debugger.

Comment 5 André Johansen 2005-07-01 20:10:35 UTC

Recent TotalView versions have a work-around for this problem.

Comment 6 Dave Jones 2005-07-15 19:17:36 UTC

An update has been released for Fedora Core 3 (kernel-2.6.12-1.1372_FC3) which
may contain a fix for your problem.   Please update to this new kernel, and
report whether or not it fixes your problem.

If you have updated to Fedora Core 4 since this bug was opened, and the problem
still occurs with the latest updates for that release, please change the version
field of this bug to 'fc4'.

Thank you.

Comment 7 André Johansen 2005-07-25 17:22:10 UTC

The first computer I tried this on would not boot (unable to mount the root 
filesystem).  Will try on another later, and report back.

Comment 8 André Johansen 2005-08-03 08:15:18 UTC

With mkinitrd fixed (mkinitrd-4.1.18.1-1), 2.6.12 now boots, and seems to have 
fixed the issue.