[Konsole-devel] [Bug 143880] Konsole does not kill su root 'top' process which zombifies

[Jonathan E.Snow]

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http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=143880         




------- Additional Comments From jesnow uh edu  2007-04-05 22:12 -------
To me it seems like 1) konsole is failing to kill the root process I started and 2) the 'top' process does something once it becomes parentless that uses all that cpu. 

1) Could be because my konsole instance doesn't have the rights to kill a running root process. But then the bash shell would be left similarly ownerless, and that doesn't happen. 

2) Requires some special activity in top to grab all that cpu. 

Loop.c (below) exhibits the same behavior when run as root. You start it as root, click the window away, then it remains there un-dead, looping away. Depending on how top calculates its wait period, maybe it grabs all that cpu because the display output has become so fast (because there's no display?), and so it executes its main loop more often. 

main () {
        int i;
        while (1) {
                i++;  // this is so the loop for sure doesn't get optimized away. 
                }
        return i;
}

Seems like this could be a security issue if a root process can outlive its parent. I've been annoyed by this behavior for years, I'm amazed nobody has complained about it until now.