Defunct messages and spawned processes

[Lawrence Kesteloot]

I've got two problems that I haven't found any mention of in any of the
manuals:

1.  I've got a program which needs to repeatedly fork() a child and
kill() it (sometimes the child ends normally).  Each time the child
exits (either killed or ending normally), the system is left with a
Defunct process.  The system seems to have an upper limit on the number
of processes in memory at any time, so I can only fork() limited number
of times.  Is there any way to get rid of these defunct processes (they
go away when the program ends, but I don't want the program to end)?

2.  I've got a program A which does a system("B &"); to spawn another
process in the background.  It seems that A can't terminate until B
does.  I would like to be able to get out of A and keep B running as if
I had run B & from the command line before running A.  Is there any way
to do this?  (What actually happens is that A pops up a window.  When A
terminates, it's no longer in the "ps" list, but the window stays open
until I kill "B".)

E-Mail would be great, I'll post a summary.  Thanks in advance.

Lawrence Kesteloot (lkestel at gmuvax2.gmu.edu)