easyMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
XK0-006 Practice Question: A process has become unresponsive and is in a…
A process has become unresponsive and is in a zombie state. Which action should the administrator take to remove the zombie process?
⚠ Common exam trap
CompTIA often tests the misconception that you can kill a zombie process directly with kill -9, but the trap is that a zombie is already dead and only its parent's termination (or explicit wait) can remove it from the process table.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Kill the parent process of the zombie
A zombie process is a child process that has terminated but whose exit status has not been read by its parent. The only way to remove it is to kill the parent process (using kill -9 or similar), which causes the zombie to be re-parented to init (PID 1), which then automatically reaps it by calling wait(). Option D is correct because directly killing the zombie (kill -9) has no effect—the zombie is already dead and cannot receive signals.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
kill -18 <PID>
Why it's wrong here
Signal 18 (SIGCONT) continues a stopped process; it does not affect zombies.
- ✗
kill -9 <PID>
Why it's wrong here
A zombie process is already dead and cannot be terminated; kill -9 has no effect.
- ✗
Wait for the init process to clean it up; no action needed
Why it's wrong here
While init will eventually reap the zombie if the parent dies, this is not proactive and may leave the zombie indefinitely if the parent is running.
- ✓
Kill the parent process of the zombie
Why this is correct
When the parent process dies, the zombie is inherited by init, which reaps it immediately.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This XK0-006 question is part of Courseiva's 979-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This XK0-006 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the XK0-006 exam.