Description of problem: When CPU load-average is high, some dovecot-auth processes leave as defunct status. However, dovecot can work fine and does not crash during CPU load- average is high. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): dovecot-0.99.11-8.EL4.i386 How reproducible: This server has joined Active Directory domain using samba winbindd. (security=ADS in smb.conf) Steps to Reproduce: 1. Join Active Directory domain using samba winbind. 2. Configure dovecot as pam authentication. (Edit /etc/pam.d/dovecot) 3. View "ps" during accesssing from MUA to dovecot. Actual results: Sometimes shows "defunct" process. Expected results: No zombie processes. Additional info: kernel - 2.6.9-55.0.2.ELsmp samba-3.0.25b-1.el4_6.2 samba-common-3.0.25b-1.el4_6.2 samba-client-3.0.25b-1.el4_6.2 krb5-libs-1.3.4-54 krb5-devel-1.3.4-54 krb5-workstation-1.3.4-54 pam_krb5-2.1.17-1
Created attachment 289752 [details] dovecot.conf
Created attachment 289753 [details] smb.conf
Do these stay there for a long time? IOW if a process shows as defunct, does it stay there forever? And if not, does it disappear within a second or rather after a longer amount of time?
Some defunct processes will disappear within a second. And in my case, dovecot work fine. (Does not crash) CPU load-average counts running or runnable processes include defunct process, doesn`t it?
Some or all? CPU load-average counts running processes, zombies (defunct processes) are not running, by definition.
"ps" command is executed each five minutes on my system. Three or four times a day, cpu load-average is high. When it is occurred, dovecot defunct processes are much. (not all processes) On other hand, there is not defunct processes when cpu load-average is low.
Yeah, but do they stay there? If they disappear within a second, why do you think it is an issue?
Dovecot has its own process manager that takes care of creating and destroying processes that are serving the authentication and data flow to the users. Because you are saying that the auth process' count is varying during the time and not continue to grow all the time then it is not an issue.