How to create Zombie process using C code manually ?

Today we will see an example how to create a zombie process on our linux machine using a short c program.

For this, we will open two terminal sessions.

On First Terminal

1. Create a C file with following code.

### Here we create a new process and then sleep it.
### As a result the parent process becomes zombie.

[root@ngelinux ~]# cat abc.c 
#include 
#include 
#include 

int main ()
{
        pid_t newpid;

          newpid = fork ();
            if (newpid > 0) {
                      sleep (80);
                        }
              else {
                        exit (0);
                          }
                return 0;
}
[root@ngelinux ~]# 

2. Compile the code and create object file

[root@ngelinux ~]# gcc -o abc.o abc.c 
[root@ngelinux ~]# 

3. Run the executable object file

[root@ngelinux ~]# ./abc.o 

On Second Terminal

Since the program is executed, we can now see the zombie process in the process list.

[root@ngelinux ~]# ps -e -o pid,ppid,stat,cmd | grep Z
 2123  2121 Z+   [abc.o] 
 2126  1847 S+   grep Z
[root@ngelinux ~]#

Tags: c programdefunctgcclinuxpid_tprocesspsunixzombie