Xcode: fun with fork-bombs
I came back from a week-long trip and found hundreds of python zombie processes on my system, for all users [even root].
Was a bit worried that my machine had been compromised until I saw this:
http://elliotth.blogspot.com/2006/06/attack-of-mac-python-zombies.html
It turns out the latest XCode has a bug which creates many zombie python processes. If you do not reboot frequently, your machine will run out of processes.
This is caused by the distributed build component; when installed, XCode launches a daemon to volunteer your machines for distributed builds, regardless of whether you even enable distributed builds [bad Apple! I'm glad I've got a good firewall].
The fix is simple enough:
cd /System/Library/LaunchDaemons
sudo launchctl unload -w com.apple.dnbobserver.plist
A more in-depth discussion is here:
http://groups.google.de/group/comp.sys.mac.system/browse_thread/thread/dfc0557a3 bdf862c/e8368455c0510120?hl=de
Other OS