Zombie Status?!

[TheT]

Just wondering... I saw some things in my progress viewer that made me wonder:
There were about 3 'chmod' progresses with owner 'root' and status 'Zombie'... and I read somewhere else that other users saw other progresses with the status 'Zombie', too... what the **** does that mean?

 

[szark]

Definition: A zombie process is a process that has finished executing and will be deleted at a later time.

Why do zombie processes exist? When a process finishes it calls the exit system routine. The kernel then releases all system resources previously used by the process, but saves the exit status and process ID. The process is now in the zombie process state. The process remains a zombie process until its parent process checks the exit status and tells the kernel to completely delete the process.

(quoted from this link)

 

[TheT]

Thanks! I couldn't find anything myself, good thing there's macrumors for that!