Just for fun: creating zombies with Python
Steven D'Aprano
steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info
Thu Jun 2 04:56:46 EDT 2016
Just for fun, I thought I'd create some zombie processes using Linux.
(This will probably only work on POSIX-compliant operating systems. I don't
know that Windows has zombies.)
I started with the C code given here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_process#Examples
and re-wrote it into Python:
steve at runes:~$ cat zombie.py
import os, sys, time
pids = [None]*10
for i in range(9, -1, -1):
pids[i] = os.fork()
if pids[i] == 0:
time.sleep(i+1)
os._exit(0)
for i in range(9, -1, -1):
os.waitpid(pids[i], 0)
If you run that script on Linux, and watch the process list using (say) top,
you will see the number of zombies grow up to a maximum of nine, then drop back
down to (hopefully) zero.
--
Steve
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