Linux: <defunct> unresponsive processes hold up jcmd, jps

[Thomas Stüfe]

Hi all,

as the subject says, I have a defunct, unkillable java process on my
machine. Why it is there I have no idea and no great motivation to
analyze, it is a remnant from an earlier debug session and quite
unkillable.

However, it seems jps, jcmd and probably other tools too stumble over
it. An invocation of jcmd to list current java processes, normally
instantaneous, takes long.

I assume the tool sees the still existing
/tmp/hsperfdata_thomas/<pid>, attempts to connect, and times out?
Would there be a way to avoid attempting to connect to a defunct
process?

Thanks, Thomas