<defunct>

[Bonzo]

I am running out of cpu on a server and while watching the server process I see <defunct> comes up a few times:

Is this anything to worry about ?

[fmw42]

Don't know much about this. But did you try disabling OpenMP?

Also you might also identify the server and platform so the experts might have more info.

[snibgo]

See, for example, http://en.linuxreviews.org/Defunct_process

[Bonzo]

Don't know much about this. But did you try disabling OpenMP?

I am not sure of the server hardware and if OpenMP would make a difference. This project is on hold at the moment and I will look into it if it takes off again.
The server is Running CentOS 5. something.

See, for example, http://en.linuxreviews.org/Defunct_process

I have read that there is no memory used with a defunct process but the screen shot was showing some cpu allocated to it. This may just be left over from what it had been using and the display had not caught up ?

This code was using 99% CPU but had plenty of memory spair and so I was monitoring it to see where the bottle neck was.

[snibgo]

I last worked on Unix servers 15 years ago, so don't rely on my memory, but I think you'll find the process is a "zombie" that consumes no resources.