Patent ID: 7308690
Filing Date: 2007-12-11
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method of handling an exit request in an operating system that includes a plurality of processes, said method comprising: receiving the exit request for an exiting process, the exiting process being one of the plurality of processes; identifying one or more zombie processes that are child processes of the exiting process, wherein at least one of the zombie processes is being acknowledged by the exiting process, wherein a signal handler is not established corresponding to the exiting process in order to handle child processes that have exited, and wherein a flag that indicates that the exiting process is not interested in obtaining status information on child processes that have exited is not set; removing each of the identified zombie processes from the computer system without re-parenting the identified zombie processes; identifying one or more active processes that are child processes of the exiting process; setting a re-parented flag for each of the identified active processes; re-parenting each of the identified active processes to a standard system process; receiving a subsequent exit request from one of the re-parented processes; determining that the re-parented flag has been set for the exiting re-parented process; and removing the exiting re-parented process from the computer system in response to the determination, wherein the removing is performed by a second standard system process and does not impact the performance of the standard system process.