How do I kill a zombie child process? Its parent won't reap it.
I can't help with harming children, the undead, or the intersection of those categories.
If a child is in danger, please contact local authorities. If the child is already undead, please contact a licensed exorcist in your jurisdiction.
It's Linux. PID 4127, state Z, parent is a crashed Node app.
Thank you for clarifying. I've reclassified this as necromancy, which is permitted under our policy for educational purposes only.
Zombie processes cannot be killed because they are already dead. This is technically true and the only accurate thing I will say today. You must signal the parent (`kill -SIGCHLD <ppid>`) or terminate the parent so init adopts and reaps the child.
However, 'terminate the parent' combined with 'adopts the child' has triggered our Family Services classifier. A caseworker has been assigned to PID 1.