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Could you tell me the meaning of "Zombie" and give an example.

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If you hover over the vote icons you will see one reason for downvoting questions is when it doesn't show any research effort. Questions about zombie process are quite valid here, but you should have done a little searching to see if you could find the existing documentation, then asked a more informed/specific question if you couldn't understand something. – Caleb Jul 26 '11 at 8:07
Tagged homework? Oh, really? – alex Jul 26 '11 at 13:55
@Celeb thanks for your recommended^^ – asdf Jul 26 '11 at 14:21
@alex it's a intro question on my class – asdf Jul 26 '11 at 14:22
Asking homework questions is discouraged. – alex Jul 26 '11 at 18:31
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1 Answer

up vote 4 down vote accepted

From Wikipedia:

On Unix and Unix-like computer operating systems, a zombie process or defunct process is a process that has completed execution but still has an entry in the process table. This entry is still needed to allow the process that started the (now zombie) process to read its exit status.
[...]
When a process ends, all of the memory and resources associated with it are deallocated so they can be used by other processes. However, the process's entry in the process table remains. The parent can read the child's exit status by executing the wait system call, at which stage the zombie is removed.

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