[Zope] zombies with htmldoc

[J Cameron Cooper]

Dennis Allison wrote:

>Running htmldoc via an External Method that uses popen2() under zope
>2.6.2b3 and python 2.1.3 (both by the book...) I get zombie processes that
>just hang in there...  Now zombie processes exist when a parent does not 
>wait() for a child, so the problem would look like it's in popen().  The
>htmldoc process seems to run to completion and generate the expected
>output.
>...
>Oh, yes -- the OS is RH9 and the machine is a dual processor Athlon.  I
>suspect some OS related problem since this same code works without
>creating Zombies on RH7.3.
>
Very likely. RH9 uses a new threading library which has had some, uh, 
growing pains. There are workarounds that you can find on the list (a 
certain environment variable will cause the old library to be used). Or 
keep on top of the latest versions and hopefully it'll clear up. (A bug 
report to RH and/or Python would probably help.) Can you reproduce it 
from regular Python?

          --jcc
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