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When using the 'exec=command' feature in the 2nd tab-deliminated field of the ~/.swatchrc, the command executed does not terminate properly when it is finished-- it becomes a zombie process, every time (this has been tested using such innocuous commands as 'exec=echo'). When swatch is triggered enough times, the zombie processes build up, eventually filling the process table and thus requiring a reboot.
You can clear the zombies by killing their parent. So killing swatch will clean up the stuff it fails to wait for. (Not a fix but avoids reboots) ------- Additional Comments From 06/12/99 12:44 ------- Not to split hairs, but I think it is worth noting that killing swatch will not successfully clean up the zombie processes, nor prevent more from being spawned... it is necessary to kill perl itself. And a side note-- this bug is particularly detrimental on unattended machines, since killing perl isn't an option in that situation.
This issue has been forwarded to a developer for further action.
fixed in swatch-2.2-8 and later, available soon in RawHide and eventually our next release.