Zombie Process Flood

Clear 300+ zombie processes without rebooting by fixing the parent reaping.

A advanced Linux challenge worth 20 points. Solve it hands-on in a real Linux environment in your browser - no local setup, no fake shells.

The Challenge

ps aux shows Z state for over 300 processes. They cannot be killed directly — only their parent can reap them.

Your tasks:

• Count zombies: ps aux | awk '$8=="Z"' | wc -l
• Find the parent PID: ps -o ppid= -p $(ps aux | awk '$8=="Z"{print $2}' | head -1)
• Try prompting the parent to reap: kill -CHLD <PPID>
• Check if zombie count drops: ps aux | awk '$8=="Z"' | wc -l
• If parent is unresponsive: kill -9 <PPID> (init reaps orphaned zombies)
• Verify zombie count reaches 0
• Write PPID, action taken, and result to /tmp/zombie_report.txt
• Run check to validate