Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to zombie perl processes

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Posted by Matthew Braithwaite on

What's wrong is sloppy code in AOLserver. Both zombie processes, and the message `Interrupted system call', are indications of an incorrect program, whenever they occur, in whatever program. So unless you're prepared to hack on AOLserver's code there isn't much you can do about this.

I despair of ever fixing these in AOLserver, because they need to be fixed in a jillion places: rather than an API that obscures EINTR, there are a bunch of system calls that all need to be wrapped individually. Some are, some aren't. The code betrays some slight awareness of the existence of SA_RESTART, but it isn't used.

I'm going to pop over to the AOLserver mailing list and try to make some constructive suggestions about this.