Zombie subprocesses (again)

Zombie subprocesses (again)

[Michael Heerdegen]

Hello,

I'm using emacs-snapshot on Debian, a four days old build of trunk.

I didn't know about this zombie subprocess bug (bug#12980) at all until
today, where I experienced the following:

- I start Emacs in X as a different user (via gksu), or

- I start Emacs from an X session that was started with startx

In such an Emacs, any child process seems to become a zombie after
being finished.  E.g., when I type "exit" in an *terminal* running bash,
there is still a running buffer process.  As a symptom, CPU
is used at 100% until I C-x C-c.

However, if I log in via display manager and don't switch to another
user via gksu, this doesn't happen.  And: it happens with the gtk
version as well as with lucid, but not with emacs -nw in an xterm.

Is this a new issue?  Or could it be my setup?


Thanks,

Michael.

Re: Zombie subprocesses (again)

[Paul Eggert]

I can reproduce the problem on Ubuntu 13.04.
Apparently when you start up a GTK Emacs session
that can't talk to dbus (because it's su'ed), the dbus library
starts up its own service, using dbus-launch.
This messes up Emacs somehow (I don't know why).

It's probably worth filing a new bug report for this.  A possible
workaround is to launch your own dbus service before invoking
Emacs, though I haven't tried this.

Re: Zombie subprocesses (again)

[Michael Heerdegen]

Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> writes:

> I can reproduce the problem on Ubuntu 13.04.
> Apparently when you start up a GTK Emacs session
> that can't talk to dbus (because it's su'ed), the dbus library
> starts up its own service, using dbus-launch.
> This messes up Emacs somehow (I don't know why).

Thanks for checking.

> It's probably worth filing a new bug report for this.

Done - 14474.

>  A possible workaround is to launch your own dbus service before
> invoking Emacs, though I haven't tried this.

How do I do that?


Thanks,

Michael.