<defunct>: too many from pipe

[Mike -- EMAIL IGNORED]

On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 11:47:57 -0700, Alan M. Evans wrote:

> On Mon, 2007-08-20 at 19:24 +0100, Andy Green wrote:
>> Like a ghost that cannot go on to
>> the afterlife because it has a terrible secret it must tell someone,
>> the zombies are hanging on grimly so they can whisper their process
>> return code into their parents' ear before finally fading away.
> 
> What an outstanding description! Clear and nearly literary in its
> composition. Did you just make that up yourself? Truly, it should be in
> a book somewhere, or somehow immortalized in a FAQ or HOWTO.
> 
> What a gem. Really.

Thanks to Andy Green and Alan Cox; I added the line to my pipe
class destructor and my problem is solved.  While this is not a
problem, I note that the following:

root at mbrc32 MdbUtil]# ps -ef | grep defunct | grep -v grep
root      7808  1898  0 14:27 ?        00:00:00 [sh] <defunct>
root      7811  1898  0 14:27 ?        00:00:00 [sh] <defunct>

persists with the same pids through several executions of the
command that should kill all zombies.

I also second the appreciation noted by Alan M. Evans.

Mike.