Scenario:

The process count on a production server keeps increasing even though no new workloads were deployed. Zombie processes are accumulating in the system.

Task:

Find all zombie processes, kill their parent processes to remove the zombies, and confirm they are gone from the system.

Expected Output:

No leftover or defunct processes should be left after the fix.

ps -eo pid,ppid,stat,cmd |  grep  'Z'  |  awk  '{print $2}'  |  xargs -r kill

Explanation:

• ps -eo pid,ppid,stat,cmd - Lists all processes with PID, Parent PID, status, and command
• grep 'Z' - Filters for zombie processes (status Z)
• awk '{print $2}' - Extracts the PPID (parent process ID) column
• xargs -r kill - Kills the parent processes to clean up zombies