From: Eric Schwartz <eric.schwartz@...>
Date: 2002-12-18T08:07:45+09:00
Subject: forking with block leaves zombie procs

I'm still in the process of reducing this to a simple test case, but
I thought I'd post and see if anybody had suggestions.  I am starting
a bunch of test cases, and then forking to wait on the success or
failure of the tests.  Currently, it looks something like:

test_list.each {|test|
  start_test(test, machine)
  fork {
    sleep 20 while !test_finished(test, machine)
    get_test_logfiles(test, machine)
    exit(0)
  }
}

However, every time I run this code, I get a zombie process sitting
around, waiting for init to reap it.  If I'm running a bunch of tests,
this can get really annoying, and clutters up the process table
something fierce.  Any ideas on how to prevent this happening?  I
tried nesting fork blocks, but that didn't work.  This isn't a
ruby-specific issue, I don't think (unless it's something to do with
forking with blocks instead of using fork()), but I've a mental block
on where to proceed.

-=Eric
-- 
Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million
typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare.
		-- Blair Houghton.