<DEFUNCT> Processes

When I ps -ef I see about 3 or 4 <DEFUNCT> things - what are these, and what causes them? Are they a concern? How can I fix them?

Thanks,
Michael

Defunct processes (also called zombie processes) are processes which were not cleaned up by their parent, and the parent process has died. They cannot be killed without a reboot. I don't worry too much about them.

Edit - I missed the title first time. This was my original; response.
Can you paste what you are seeing? If it is;
UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD

UID=User ID the process is running as (typically who started the process)
PID=Process ID of this process (every process has a unique ID)
PPID=Parent process which spawned this process
C=??? I think it has something to do with priority
STIME=When the proess was spawned
TTY=Terminal process is attached to
TIME=Cumulative processor time used by this process
CMD=Actual command that is running

[Edited by 98_1LE on 02-20-2001 at 01:15 PM]

crown> ps -ef|grep defunct
applmgr 12894 26249 0.0 - ?? 0:00.00 <defunct>
applmgr 29054 29848 0.0 - ?? 0:00.00 <defunct>
applmgr 29757 25203 0.0 - ?? 0:00.00 <defunct>
oracle 28889 32402 0.0 13:24:35 lat/638 0:00.01 grep defunct
crown>

I posted the info - do you have any suggestions?

Unless you are noticing performance issues on your machine, I wouldn't worry about these. You can reboot to get rid of them if you want.