On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 10:07:51PM +0300, Alex Efros wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 06:13:25PM +0000, Gerrit Pape wrote:
> > Hi Alex, after checking the code, I currently cannot say that or how
> > runit could fail reaping zombies that detached and re-parented to pid 1.
> > On Linux running strace on pid 1 isn't supported AFAIK.  To be sure that
> > runit is at fault, can you please check the kernel versions on your two
> > machines, can it be that they have changed at the time the problem
> > popped up?  Does upgrading the Linux kernel to a more recent version
> > change anything?
> 
> Yeah, I also think this may be kernel<->runit bug. But this bug happens
> previously on 2.6.16, and now I've it on 2.6.20 (upgraded few days ago).
> 
> Moreover, looks like runit not just 'stop reaping zombies' at some point.
> Looks like it continue reaping them, but not all of them. Look:
[...]
> This server generate a lot of short-living processes every minute, i.e. it
> generate new processes much faster than new non-reaped zombies arise.
> 
> I may be wrong, but I've a feeling on 2.6.16 new non-reaped zombies arise
> much faster - in few hours I got 8192 use processes and was forced to reboot.
> 
> Maybe kernel just don't send SIGCHLD in some situation? Maybe some race
> condition in runit or kernel? Maybe if runit will try to do waitpid()
> every few seconds this will solve issue?

That could solve the issue, yes, but runit should know when to do
waitpid(), and I would like to find out why that goes wrong. I tried to
reproduce the problem on a Debian/unstable ppc with Linux 2.6.20.7, but
failed.  Does this cuase a problem on your system?:

# cat >test.c <<EOT
#include <unistd.h>

int main () {
  int pid, i;
  for (i =0; i < 8193; ++i) {
    pid =fork();
    if (pid == -1) { write(1, "f\n", 2); }
    if (!pid) {
      daemon(0, 0);
      // sleep(1);
      _exit(0);
    }
  }
  sleep(14);
  _exit(0);
}
EOT
# gcc test.c
# ./a.out

If not, can you provide this service daemon that produced these amount
of detached short-living processes?

And I have another patch to try attached.

Thanks, Gerrit.