A defunct/zombie process is one whose exit status is yet to be reaped by its parent. Few parent process may not exit for a very long time and thus leave zombies on the system. Such defunct/zombie processes do not normally impact system operation, but they do consume a small amount of system resource.
# preap pid ( Force a defunct process to be reaped by its parent )
# preap -F pid ( -F option forces the parent to reap the child by overriding safety checks )
