gnome-do makes zombies

[CrimsonKnave]

On Archlinux using gnome-do 0.8.3.1-2 every process I run with gnome-do becomes a zombie process when I quit until I kill gnome-do. A kill -9 on the process as root doesn't kill it, I've only been able to get rid of them by restarting DO.

[Chris Halse Rogers (raof)]

Hm. I think I can reproduce this, and I've got a good idea of the cause. Bah.

[CrimsonKnave (crimsonknave)]

I am still seeing this on two machines. Is there any information I can provide that will help?

[Chris Halse Rogers (raof)]

On Tue, 2011-06-21 at 16:37 +0000, CrimsonKnave wrote:
> I am still seeing this on two machines. Is there any information I can
> provide that will help?
>

I don't think so. I haven't yet managed to get around to actually
trying to fix this, but I think I've got a good idea of what to do.
Lacking only the time!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Tim Price (timprice)]

Also seeing this on Ubuntu Oneiric x64 (Linux Mint, plain vanilla gnome-shell, no MATE, no MGSE), gnome-do 0.8.5-1ubuntu2. Thanks for your work on Do, Chris - very useful program.

[Chris Halse Rogers (raof)]

Huh. I think this may actually be a Mono bug. If you can reproduce this bug, can you list the mono version that you're using?

I can reproduce on mono 2.10.5. I think this is a behaviour change in mono 2.10.

[CrimsonKnave (crimsonknave)]

I just tested this again and I noticed that either the behavior has changed or I was incorrect that it always created zombies. Currently for me it only creates zombie processes if it can't find the command and just tries to execute what I have typed. For example, if I type 'gnome-terminal' and hit enter it will run gnome-terminal and create a zombie on exit, but if I type 'term' it auto-completes to terminal and has the gnome terminal icon and will run that when I hit enter. In the second case it does not create a zombie process.

I am using gnome-do 0.8.5-3 and mono 2.10.8-1

[Chris Halse Rogers (raof)]

I'm pretty sure this is a mono bug. I see MonoDevelop also makes zombie gdbs. I think that mono's failing to waitpid, or that it's child-process-exited handling isn't working properly - I see the Process.Exited event isn't getting raised.

[vr2mx (vr2mx)]

Same problem for me. Gnome-Do (v. 0.8.5) creates xargs-zombie processess, mostly if i open 'dirs' to folders and then close them in Ubuntu 11.10, but also for some applications.

It would be great, if this issue get be fixed in due time.
Also, Gnome-Do is a very useful and recommendable little helper tool!! - A big 'Thank You' to all who participated in its development (:

[Olleg Samoylov (olleg)]

Confirm that gnome-do creates zombies only when run exec from path. When launch entries form the menu all fine.

[Olleg Samoylov (olleg)]

And reason is simple. When gnome-do run exec from the path it's create chield process and zombie later. But if gnome-do run exec from the menu it create detached process and thus there will be not a zombie. To fix this bug gnome-do must detach a "exec from the path" process in the same way.

[Chris Halse Rogers (raof)]

So, this was a Mono bug in the Exec implementation.

It's resolved in (at least) Mono 3.2.