Automatically remove zombie processes from Workbench

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Problem

On Workbench, code run by developers has the potential to spawn additional processes. Upon termination of the primary process, these sessions can remain in the background as zombie sessions.

 

Solution

These processes can be removed manually, however, Workbench has directives that can clean these up automatically for you. This involves adding the following directive to your Workbench server's  /etc/rstudio/rsession.conf configuration file:

session-quit-child-processes-on-exit=1

 
From there, restart the Workbench and Launcher services:

sudo rstudio-server restart
sudo rstudio-launcher restart

 
Note that this change will apply to newly created sessions. So you may need to manually delete any Zombie sessions that already exist.
 
More information on this can be found here:
https://docs.posit.co/ide/server-pro/rstudio_pro_sessions/workspace_management.html#child-processes

 

Support Ticket

If you still have issues after completing the above, you can always lodge a support ticket, where our group of friendly, and incredibly knowledgeable staff can assist with any issues that you may be having. You can submit a ticket here:

https://support.posit.co/hc/en-us/requests/new

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