Night of the Living Dead --- flooded with Zombies every week

[paul kirkaas]

Every Sunday I my 3b1 gets clogged with defunct zombie processes.  I
have changed everything in crontab to other days of the week, but
almost every Sunday I get all these zombies (although sometimes weeks
go by without this happening).  This has only been going on for a few
months.  Ever since 3.51m?  I don't remember; I didn't correlate it until
I read thos posts on 3.51m init problems and noticed that all the defunt
processes were children of init.  I have included a small sample of 
ps output, but I deleted 65 lines of defunct processes.

Any suggestions?  What the heck is going on here?

Thanks,
Paul
--
Paul Kirkaas
kirkaas at cs.ucla.edu
_____________________________________________________________________________

  F S    UID   PID  PPID  C PRI NI ADR SZ:RSZ   WCHAN   STIME  TTY  TIME COMD
  3 S   root     0     0  0   0 20  53  0:  0   264a8  Sep  6    ? 12298:06 swapper
  1 S   root     1     0  4  49 20  56  6:  5   70900  Sep  6    ? 17:42 init
  3 S   root     2     0  0   1 20  54 48:  0   4b4cc  Sep  6    ?  2:22 pagedaemon
  3 S   root     3     0  0   3 20  55  0:  0   5977c  Sep  6    ? 114:26 windaemon
  1 S   root    92     1  3  40 20 101 30: 15   4b5ac  Sep  6   w1  0:47 ua
  1 S   root  8307    92  6  40 20 1a6 31:  8   4b61c  Sep 13   w2  0:18 ksh
  1 R   root 10322  8307 57  74 20  a5  7: 11         14:03:53  w2  0:01 ps
  1 S   root    85     1  3  27 20  c3 73: 70   5af14  Sep  6   w3 13:09 wmgr
  1 S   root   124     1  3  27 20 129 85: 24   5afb4  Sep  6   w5  7:56 ph
  1 S   root    87     1  3  49 20  db 15:  6   1ff3c  Sep  6   w4 14:35 smgr
  1 S   root    90     1  3  49 35  ab  2:  3   70900  Sep  6  con  0:48 sysync
  1 S   root  8393    92  3  27 20 1cd 30:  1   5b004  Sep 13   w6  0:14 ksh
  1 Z   root  9706     1 80  61 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   root  9713     1 80  61 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   root  9881     1 74  61 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   uucp  9703     1 20  65 20                              <defunct>
  1 S   root  5845    92  3  27 20 1f9 33:  0   5b0a4  Sep 10   w8  0:22 ksh
  1 Z   uucp  9710     1 34  68 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   root  9816     1 77  61 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   uucp  9717     1 36  69 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   root  9768     1 65  60 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   root  9853     1 78  61 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   root  9888     1 81  61 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   uucp  9772     1 22  65 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   uucp  9820     1 23  65 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   root  9895     1 81  61 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   uucp  9857     1 25  66 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   uucp  9885     1 19  64 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   root  9902     1 81  61 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   uucp  9892     1 28  67 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   root  9909     1 81  61 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   uucp  9899     1 31  67 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   root  9916     1 81  61 20                              <defunct>
  1 Z   uucp  9906     1 27  66 20                              <defunct>
--
--
Paul Kirkaas
kirkaas at cs.ucla.edu