Orphan Process

Related topics:

• Processes
• Zombie Process
• Process Control Block (PCB)
• Threads

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Orphan Process - Parent process has finished or terminated, but it remains running.

Difference between Orphan process and Zombie process:

• In the Orphan process, the parent process has finished or terminated, though it remains running itself.
  • In a Unix-like OS, the special init system process immediately adopts any orphaned processes. This operation is called re-parenting and occurs automatically. Even though technically the process has the init process as its parent, it's still called an orphan process, since the process that originally created it no longer exists.

• In the Zombie process, the process has completed execution but still has an entry in the process table.
  • Think "zombie": the process has "died" but has not yet been "reaped".
  • Unlike normal processes, the kill command has no effect on a zombie process. When a process ends, all of the memory and resources associated with the process are de-allocated so they can be used by other processes. However, the process's entry in the process table remains.