If a process is shown with process state "D" in tools like ps or top, then its a zombie process. Example:

ps axl | grep D

F   UID   PID  PPID PRI  NI    VSZ   RSS WCHAN  STAT TTY        TIME COMMAND
4   104  2579  9109  20   0   5024  2116 refrig D    ?          0:00 cleanup -z -t unix -u -c

Zombie processes can not be killed with the normal commands like "kill -9 PID", you will have to reboot the system to kill them.

How to kill processes in “D” state in Linux?

4 thoughts on “How to kill processes in “D” state in Linux?”

  • kc lee
    June 26, 2012 at 4:12 pm
    Permalink

    Have you tried this?

    kill -9 2579

    -9 option (SIGKILL signal) kills every process.
    2579 is process id(got from ps command)

    Reply
  • japc
    June 4, 2014 at 2:53 am
    Permalink

    No, D is not a zombie process, Z is a zombie process, D is uninterruptable io, meaning it is doing something and can’t be interrupted until it finishes.

    Reply
  • Kristian Kirilov
    September 28, 2015 at 5:32 pm
    Permalink

    Thanks for the answer.

    Reply

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