How can I kill a <defunct> process whose parent is init? Transmission is intermittently hanging on my NAS. If I send SIGTERM, it doesn't disappear from the process list and a `<defunct>` label appears next to it. If I send a SIGKILL, it still doesn't disappear and I can't terminate the parent because the parent is `init`. The only way I can get rid of the process and restart Transmission is to reboot. I realize the best thing I can do is try and fix Transmission (and I've tried), but I'm a novice at compiling and I wanted to make sure my torrents finished before I start messing around with it.

You cannot kill a `` process (also known as zombie process) as it is already dead. The system keeps zombie processes for the parent to collect the exit status. If the parent does not collect the exit status then the zombie processes will stay around forever. The only way to get rid of those zombie processes are by killing the parent. If the parent is init then you can only reboot.

Zombie processes take up almost no resouces so there is no performance cost in letting them linger. Although having zombie processes around usually means there is a bug in some of your programs. Init should usually collect all children. If init has zombie children then there is a bug in init (or somehwere else but a bug it is).

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