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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: audio zombies
From:       Christian Esken <c.esken () cityweb ! de>
Date:       1999-02-02 0:32:15
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On Mon, 01 Feb 1999 uwe@uwix.alt.na wrote:
>On Sun, 31 Jan 1999, Christian Esken wrote:
>
>> On Son, 31 Jan 1999 uwe@uwix.alt.na wrote:
>> >On Sun, 31 Jan 1999, Harri Porten wrote:
>> >
>> >> uwe@uwix.alt.na wrote:
>> >> > 
>> >> > Is that bad? Well, not really. Zombies occupy a very small amount of
>> >> > memory and - of course - an entry in the process list. That's all. At
>> >> > most they are unesthetical. I think we can live with that.
>> >> 
>> >> Unless every application handles its childs that negligent and the table
>> >> runs out of entries. kwm is sort of innocent in this situation, of
>> >> course. It wouldn't hurt to catch their exit status or ignore them with
>> >> SIG_IGN (correct ? I think I read somewhere that this avoids zombies on
>> >> some systems).
>> >
>> >SIG_IGN wouldn't help. Anyway, for 'normal' KDE apps KApplications
>> >catches the signal and fetches the exit status. And for applications which
>> >use KProcess for launching children KProcess will do all the dirty and
>> >nasty work regarding signals and children. I would really advise to
>> >use KProcess.
>> 
>> Which we can only use, when we are a KDE porgram. Well, the audio server
>> is not really a KDE program. So I did my best, but I am not sure what I can
>> do against the exec'ing of kwm. I wouldn't even be sure, KProcess
>> handles this case right, until proven.
>> 
>> BTW: kaudioserver only dies when there is no sound hardware
>> available or some fatal error occurs. Its much more important that
>> kaudioserver always closes down when X11 goes down - and
>> this was a semi-impossible task if you ask me.
>> 
>> In short: Send me a patch that runs on all conditions (e.g. started
>> by kdm, started via shell and so on).
>
>Christian, kaudioserver can't do anything about it! And the zombies
>aren't real problems. That was what I tried to convey.

Glad to hear that. That releives me very much.

If you want to know why, just peak at kaudioserver.cpp to see what
mess I had to do to get this shutdown thing straight. It's really ugly,
but there's no better way, AFAIK. But I will never touch this thing
again. ;-)

  Christian

-- 
Is Unix ready for the desktop? See http://www.kde.org

The                              Christian Esken
|/  Desktop                      KDE Developer
|\  Environment                  esken@kde.org

KDE - The net transparent free Unix Desktop for everyone

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