Very Computer

  I'm trying to debug a child process under Linux.  My problem is that
as soon as I step through the call to fork() and try to attach the
child process, the child has terminated and zombied.  A couple of
other people suggested putting a non-terminating loop as the first
statement in the child process.  I tried that and still no luck.  My
last thought was to increase NPROC and recompile the kernel.  With an
NPROC of 20 the child still terminates.
  I'm a novice Linux(UNIX) programmer and am looking for *any*
suggestions.  Successfule sections of code that I could look at would
be appreciated as well.
  I'm running Linux 1.1.59, compiling with gcc, and debugging with gdb
under emacs.

Thanks,
  Ron Martin

:   I'm trying to debug a child process under Linux.  My problem is that
: as soon as I step through the call to fork() and try to attach the
: child process, the child has terminated and zombied.  A couple of
: other people suggested putting a non-terminating loop as the first
: statement in the child process.  I tried that and still no luck.  My

Why not?
This is a correct way to do it, and i tried it out on a Sun and
on my linux box - it worked...
Please try it again this way:
At the point you want to debug the child process, you have to
code in infinite loop, just like:
int a = 1;
while ( a );
after you started your prog, attach this child process from
the "outside" with your de*. First you need the PID...
 $ ps
 4711 mychildproc
 $ gdb ... 4711

 I'm sorry, but at the moment i can't remember the correct call
 with the gdb (and i am sitting at an AIX-Term), but type
 man gdb
 and this will help.

Be sure, this works...
Best wishes, Friedemann