[Timer thread] <defunct>

[deeptht69-4]

Ubuntu Version:
24.04.4 LTS

I leave my laptop booted up for days on end. When I run ‘ps aux’ I have over 1,000 entries marked, “[Timer thread] \<defunct\>”, with “zombie” status. They occur every 5 minutes. Is there a way to track down what is producing them?

[graymech]

I offer this from a Google search (not AI - people also ask)

What does “defunct” mean in ps AUX?

From your output we see a defunct , which means the process has either completed its task or has been corrupted or killed, but still has child processes running or its parent process is not monitoring it properly (i.e. it does not run the code to clean it up)

From that information I would guess that you need to identify the parent process and either kill the parent process or trace the child process and kill that.

Do those 1,000 entries give any indication of the parent and child process.

Regards

[deeptht69-4]

Thank you for your help. I think I have tracked down the parent process: my twingate daemon. Now to figure out why twingate is doing this!