System information as of Fri Mar 9 19:40:01 KST 2012
System load: 0.59 Processes: 167
Usage of /home: 23.0% of 11.00GB Users logged in: 1
Swap usage: 0% IP address for eth1: 192.168.0.1
=> There is 1 zombie process.
Graph this data and manage this system at https://landscape.canonical.com/
10 packages can be updated.
4 updates are security updates.
Last login: Fri Mar 9 10:23:48 2012
a@SERVER:~$ ps auxwww | grep 'Z'
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
usera 13572 0.0 0.0 7628 992 pts/2 S+ 19:40 0:00 grep --color=auto Z
a@SERVER:~$
How to find that zombie process?
Best Answer
To kill a zombie (process) you have to kill its parent process (just like real zombies!), but the question was how to find it.
Find the zombie (The question answered this part):
What you get is Zombies and anything else with a Z in it, so you will also get the grep:
Find the zombie's parent:
Will give you:
In this case you do not want to kill that parent process and you should be quite happy with one zombie, but killing the immediate parent process 5145 should get rid of it.
Additional resources on askubuntu: