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CarpetFluff · May 16, 2003, 01:29 PM

Hi there,

Recently I noticed some weird performance issues with my mac, it starts grinding away at the hard drive and it seems like the CPUs are hogged by something.

Investigation of the Process Viewer shows that an application run by root calle LaunchCFMApp is a zombie, it doesn't seem to be hogging any resources (according to PV) but the performance issues only occur when this application goes zombie.

Has anyone any idea what could be causing this? I read that it was impossible to get rid of a zombie once it's occured and I'd like to avoid getting them at all.

I'm not running anything out of the ordinary, at the moment, Mail, iTunes, Safari and Photoshop (heavy work being done in this though!)

thanks in advance!

snerdini · May 16, 2003, 05:53 PM

AFAIK, the only way to get rid of a zombie is to sever its head from its body.

Seriously, rebooting is your only option (to get rid of a zombie process). I would try eliminating the different programs to see if you can isolate which one is causing the problem (my bet is on Photoshop), and then work from there. Sorry I can't be more help...

CarpetFluff · May 16, 2003, 06:18 PM

Thanks anyway, could be Photoshop certainly, I don't usually use it much at home except recently.

Why do you think it's PS? is it notoriously buggy in X? bit of a pain if it is considering how much it cost.

ta!

snerdini · May 16, 2003, 06:26 PM

Well, I think we can rule Mail out, since it is a Cocoa app. I think Safari is Cocoa as well, but not sure. Between the two that are left, both are Carbon, and my guess would be that it is Photoshop. It's a first generation OS X app, while iTunes is a 3rd gen (didn't iTunes come to X at version 2?). Just a very uneducated guess

snerdini · May 16, 2003, 06:33 PM

Okay, this is weird. I have all the apps open that you listed above, and I don't have a single LaunchCFMApp process. What gives?

Were there any other apps open at the time?

mrmister · May 16, 2003, 06:40 PM

Just kill it from the terminal with a:

sudo kill -9 <PID>

where PID is the process ID you got from running top.

snerdini · 07:10 PM

Originally posted by mrmister:
Just kill it from the terminal with a:

sudo kill -9 <PID>

where PID is the process ID you got from running top.

After doing a little research, I realize that my previous post isn't totally accurate. You can't kill a zombie process...but if you can identify the parent, you can kill that off, and the corresponding zombie process(es) should be cleaned up.

More technically: a zombie process is one that has finished (i.e. died), but whose parent process has not received notification of its death. In order to keep process information around until the parent process is notified, the zombie's entry is left in the process table even though the process itself is gone. A bit morbid, perhaps, but since it doesn't consume resources, it's not really a problem.

If you can identify and kill the neglectful parent, the orphaned zombies will revert to the init process (PID 1) which will immediately clean them up.

As to whether zombies are bad... only in large numbers. A zombie takes up no main memory or CPU time, but it does occupy one of a finite number of process table slots. If a poorly written program leaves a lot of zombies around, the process table may fill up. At that point Bad Things Happen. Basically, no new processes can be created until some existing ones are killed. The easiest thing to do at that point is log out, which hopefully will kill the offending application. If you are unable to log out and you have a shell open, typing "exec kill -1" should have the same effect. Control clicking on doc icons to quit some apps may also help.

moki · May 17, 2003, 10:47 PM

Originally posted by snerdini:
Okay, this is weird. I have all the apps open that you listed above, and I don't have a single LaunchCFMApp process. What gives?

Were there any other apps open at the time?

LaunchCFMApp is just a stub that is used to launch CFM applications (read: not Mach-o). Some carbon apps will be CFM, some will be Mach-o (if they are OS X only).

Tools like top have been updated to use the real application's name, and not LaunchCFMApp when displaying running processes. It appears that some older tools don't do this.

theory · May 18, 2003, 08:49 PM

You don't need to reboot your mac to get
rid of zombie processes. They consume
(almost) no resources. I say almost
because the OS still keeps track of the
pid, uid, parent id and all the other
info associated with processes.

So the zombie process could not have been
the one grinding at the HD.

Zombies usually come about because the
parent is killed before the child completes. What normally happens is that
the parrents parrent becomes the new
parrent of the child. But that doesn't always happen and then you get zombies.

bankmann@mac.com · May 19, 2003, 01:55 AM

I aquired NU 2.0 when I was running OSX 10.1.x. It took me a while to install it under 10.2.x... and whoah! Nelly!

Mac OSX 10.2.x definitely doesn't like NU 2.0. I guess there possibly could exist an upgrade at Symantec, fixing the problem, but as NU 2.0 just doesn't do anything but crap the system, who am I to know? Symantec doesn't seem to let you download upgrades without Live Update...

But, back to zombies.
I noticed only one of those before removing NU 2.0. As I rarely reboot my iBook (I usually install software/upgrades on this before I take any chances with my G4.), It wasn't until I checked some performace issue I noticed I had dozens of those zombies on my system.

I tracked this back to traces of the NU installation; files, progs and config left by uninstall. Uninstall won't remove active processes/software. This can be read from the NU uninstall log.

Removing what was left uf NU; including any config file I could find, as well as Start Up Items (global); and rebooting, fixed the problem.

My guess is that you've installed/removed some software that has left an Startup Item slightly crippled. At least it's worth a try. Good luck!

Bankmann

CarpetFluff · May 19, 2003, 02:16 AM

I have a number of things that run at startup. However it takes some time for me to find a zombie lurking so I think it's something I'm doing in the mean time. As LaunchCFM.app is part of Carbon, can I rule out any Cocoa based software?

theory · May 19, 2003, 09:07 PM

Zombies are not a problem they have no
effect on the computer what so ever.

So don't worry about it

.
LaunchCFMApp is how non Mach-o binaries
are launched (CFM =Code Fragment manager
is the binarie format that works on os 9
and os x). So the zombie process itself
was a carbon program but it doesn't meen
that the program that launched it was carbon.

bankmann@mac.com · Jun 6, 2003, 07:54 AM

Originally posted by CarpetFluff:
I have a number of things that run at startup. However it takes some time for me to find a zombie lurking so I think it's something I'm doing in the mean time. As LaunchCFM.app is part of Carbon, can I rule out any Cocoa based software?

I found half the source of my zombies in the global start up items folder:

/<system drive>/Library/StartupItems/

You should also check out the Application Support - and Preferences folders - both in the global Library - and your user's Library folders.

Bankmann