"Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job..." in Console

I also get this error and I am not sure how to fix it. Hope someone out their can help.

Message was edited by: Brent Deverman

That's just launchd cleaning house. If you get an excessive number of them continuously then something is probably crashing.

It happens quite often. It is hard to tell if this is interfering with normal operation as I also have a problem running cron with launchd and either that or both of these problems are filling up the proc table making it so I have to restart the computer. Any ideas on where to start debugging?

cron is deprecated in OS X and I certainly wouldn't try getting it to interact with launchd in the first place. Apart from that the only thing I can say at this point is that you may have configured postfix incorrectly.

Did you ever find out why these messages were happening and how to stop them?
I have the same problem - once a minute, a new set of postfix log entries appear...

Aug 20 10:45:16 devel com.apple.launchd[1] (org.postfix.master[619]): Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 620 PPID 1 pickup
Aug 20 10:45:16 devel com.apple.launchd[1] (org.postfix.master[619]): Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 621 PPID 1 qmgr
Aug 20 10:46:16 devel com.apple.launchd[1] (org.postfix.master[622]): Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 623 PPID 1 pickup
Aug 20 10:46:16 devel com.apple.launchd[1] (org.postfix.master[622]): Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 624 PPID 1 qmgr
Aug 20 10:47:16 devel com.apple.launchd[1] (org.postfix.master[625]): Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 627 PPID 1 qmgr
Aug 20 10:48:16 devel com.apple.launchd[1] (org.postfix.master[628]): Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 630 PPID 1 qmgr
Aug 20 10:49:16 devel com.apple.launchd[1] (org.postfix.master[631]): Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 633 PPID 1 qmgr
Aug 20 10:50:16 devel com.apple.launchd[1] (org.postfix.master[634]): Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 635 PPID 1 pickup
Aug 20 10:51:16 devel com.apple.launchd[1] (org.postfix.master[637]): Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 639 PPID 1 qmgr
Aug 20 10:52:16 devel com.apple.launchd[1] (org.postfix.master[640]): Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 642 PPID 1 qmgr

What do you mean "cron is deprecated in OS X"

I'm more inclined to think these messages are related to Time Machine than cron.
Has any progress been made on this?

Tim McCoy wrote:
What do you mean "cron is deprecated in OS X"

Since launchd was introduced in 10.4, some of the older traditional UNIX ways of doing things have been deprecated, particularly in 10.5. cron happens to be one of these routines.

I'm more inclined to think these messages are related to Time Machine than cron.

The "Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job:" message is evidence of launchd garbage collecting stray child processes which were created by some of the more traditional, and now deprecated, methods (expanding on what orangekay posted above). You will usually find these are not in Apple software: the examples in this topic are all from postfix, but I get them from my satnav software every time it "calls home" to check for updates. I'm sure there are many, many more examples.

They are nothing to do with Time Machine. They are, also, mostly harmless.

check your org.postfix.master.plist file in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons.
if the process args contain '-e 60' check the master man-page:
' -e exit_time
Terminate the master process after exit_time seconds. Child processes terminate at their convenience.
'
if you remove the -e60 arg the process lives forever and the messages disappear.
hth efwe