problem with init or vcron?

Destroyer · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 18

I set up a simple cron task to run a perl script once a day, but in the morning when I check on the server and look at top I see this:

top - 11:33:24 up 18:58, 1 user, load average: 1.12, 1.03, 1.01
Tasks: 65 total, 2 running, 45 sleeping, 0 stopped, 18 zombie
Cpu0 : 0.0% user, 0.3% system, 0.0% nice, 99.7% idle
Cpu1 : 8.0% user, 92.0% system, 0.0% nice, 0.0% idle
Mem: 514644k total, 163044k used, 351600k free, 8560k buffers
Swap: 1004052k total, 21008k used, 983044k free, 111404k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ Command
1 root 25 0 8248 8208 16 R 99.9 1.6 314:54.40 init
3118 hlds 15 0 988 988 800 R 0.3 0.2 0:00.08 top
2 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration_CPU0
3 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration_CPU1
4 root 16 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 keventd
5 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.08 ksoftirqd_CPU0
6 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.08 ksoftirqd_CPU1
7 root 16 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:06.36 kswapd
8 root 25 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 bdflush
9 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.81 kupdated
12 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ahc_dv_0
13 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ahc_dv_1
14 root 25 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_0
15 root 25 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_1
16 root 22 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd
17 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.10 kreiserfsd
160 root 17 0 388 300 292 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 devfsd
861 root 15 0 0 0 0 Z 0.0 0.0 0:00.56 syslog-ng <defunct>
978 root 25 0 976 824 688 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.05 mysqld_safe
1087 root 16 0 376 188 152 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.37 sshd
1097 mysql 15 0 0 0 0 Z 0.0 0.0 0:00.69 mysqld <defunct>
1098 mysql 16 0 0 0 0 Z 0.0 0.0 0:00.08 mysqld <defunct>
1099 mysql 16 0 0 0 0 Z 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 mysqld <defunct>
1101 root 15 0 1988 92 88 S 0.0 0.0 0:02.23 apache2
1194 apache 19 0 1472 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 apache2
1195 ntp 15 0 2204 2204 1960 S 0.0 0.4 0:02.81 ntpd
1237 root 15 0 0 0 0 Z 0.0 0.0 0:03.52 sendmail <defunct>
1240 smmsp 16 0 740 308 260 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.02 sendmail
1271 apache 16 0 4596 2516 1832 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.69 apache2
1272 apache 16 0 4300 1324 1268 S 0.0 0.3 0:02.13 apache2
1273 apache 16 0 4304 1280 1232 S 0.0 0.2 0:02.95 apache2
1274 apache 16 0 4352 1304 1264 S 0.0 0.3 0:04.74 apache2
1275 apache 16 0 4612 1284 1232 S 0.0 0.2 0:02.46 apache2
1276 root 15 0 0 0 0 Z 0.0 0.0 0:00.13 cron <defunct>
1319 root 21 0 124 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.06 xinetd
1332 root 16 0 68 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 agetty
1333 root 15 0 68 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 agetty
1334 root 15 0 68 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 agetty
1335 root 15 0 68 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 agetty
1336 root 15 0 68 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 agetty
1337 root 15 0 68 4 4 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 agetty

Destroyer · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 18

this is what my crontab looks like

MAILTO = ""
* 5 * * * nice /home/hlds/psychostats1.9/stats.pl >/dev/null 2>&1
* 8 * * * nice /home/hlds/psychostats1.9-2/stats.pl >/dev/null 2>&1

and I can run the stats.pl from the command line just fine the script runs for about 45 mins.

anyone have any ideas why init would end up pegging the cpu and leaving all the zombie processes?