Re: runit not collecting zombies

[Charlie Brady <charlieb-supervision@budge.apana.org.au>]

On Wed, 12 Sep 2007, Alex Efros wrote:

> We all already know what you think about this issue. There IS a bug
> somewhere (runit/kernel/somewhere else) and you don't help us to fix it.
> The idea is: no matter what user are doing, there shouldn't be increasing
> number of unreaped zombies in the system.

Sure, but until more detail is known about that exact circumstances where 
such unreaped zombies appear there's little chance that anyone can fix the 
bug.

> ... because there different software which also
> produce unreaped zombies (like ssh).

You keep saying that, but I continue to doubt it. If you can document that 
that occurs, I'm sure that the ssh maintainers will want to fix the bug.

> Your recommendation sounds like 'start less short-living processes', which
> is idiocy!

No, that's not my recommendation. My recommendation is that you do not 
deploy software which creates zombies.

> Server should work, and if it work is to run a lot of
> short-living processes - then it should do this in reliable manner without
> requiring reboot every several days.

Agreed. Short-living processes are fine, and if their parent process reaps 
their status, they won't become zombies.

> Sorry for my emotions - now I've a
> lot of Linux servers which work just like Windows - from reboot to reboot -
> and that makes me a little angry...

My advice is that you don't get angry, but you fix the problem. Please go 
back to the discussion of your cron script on June 12. I still can't see 
any reason why you are using cron. Just run runsvdir as a supervised 
process. Your process tree will be something like:

runit
\_ runsvdir -P /service log: ..................
   \_ runsv soft.p
     \_ runsvdir -P /var/www/soft.p/html/.lib/service
       \_ runsv soft.p.service1
         \_ service1
       \_ runsv soft.p.service2
         \_ service2
       \_ runsv soft.p.service3
         \_ service3
   \_ runsv soft.q
     \_ runsvdir -P /var/www/soft.q/html/.lib/service
   \_ runsv dnscache
...

Trying to start a new unsupervised runsvdir in 
/var/www/soft.p/html/.lib/service via cron (as you were doing) is just 
asking for troube - as well as doing lots of unnecessary work.