What is a zombie process or thread, and what creates them?  Do I just kill them, or can I do something to get diagnostics about how they died?
What is a zombie process or thread?
multithreading;debugging;linux development
What is a zombie process or thread, and what creates them?A zombie process is a dead processes.The OS is just keeping information around so the parent can check the exit code of the processes at some later point as such the OS keeps information about them and thus they turn up when looking at processes.Do I just kill them,No. They are already dead.The OS will clean up when the parent dies or gets the status code from the OS.  or can I do something to get diagnostics about how they died?No. The parent can but not the shell.