8000 zombie processes!!!

Hi,

I have a dual Xeon 2.4Ghz server that seems to be unstable of late. I havne't really been maintaining it over the Christmas break. To my horror, I found that it had over 8700 zombie processes. I tried to do a "shutdown- r now" to reboot but the server kept going without shutting down. After doing a remote reboot, the most of the zombie processes were gone, except for three. ANd I've noticed that every few minutes or so, a new zombie process is created:

Code: 
root@server [/etc/init.d]# ps -eaf | grep defunct
root      1337     1  0 05:08 ?        00:00:00 [cppop <defunct>]
xfs       1511     1  0 05:09 ?        00:00:00 [xfs <defunct>]
mailnull  1666     1  0 05:09 ?        00:00:00 [eximstats <defunct>]
root      1686     1  0 05:09 ?        00:00:00 [cpsrvd <defunct>]
root      1701     1  0 05:09 ?        00:00:00 [cpanellogd <defunct>]
root      1706     1  0 05:09 ?        00:00:00 [cppop <defunct>]
cpanel    1739     1  0 05:09 ?        00:00:00 [stunnel-4.04loc <defunct>]
mailman   1746     1  0 05:09 ?        00:00:00 [mailmanctl <defunct>]
root      1786     1  0 05:09 ?        00:00:00 [S99local <defunct>]
root      1813     1  0 05:09 ?        00:00:00 [mysql <defunct>]
root      1820     1  0 05:09 ?        00:00:00 [spamc <defunct>]
root      2055     1  0 05:10 pts/0    00:00:00 [ckillall <defunct>]
root      2061     1  0 05:10 pts/0    00:00:00 [ckillall <defunct>]
root      2175     1  0 05:11 pts/0    00:00:00 [whostmgr <defunct>]
root      2181     1  0 05:11 pts/0    00:00:00 [whostmgr <defunct>]
root      2182     1  0 05:11 pts/0    00:00:00 [whostmgr <defunct>]
root      2206     1  0 05:11 pts/0    00:00:00 [whostmgr <defunct>]
root      2210     1  0 05:11 pts/0    00:00:00 [whostmgr2 <defunct>]
root      2217     1  0 05:12 pts/0    00:00:00 [whostmgr2 <defunct>]
root      2222     1  0 05:12 pts/0    00:00:00 [whostmgr <defunct>]
root      2227     1  0 05:13 pts/0    00:00:00 [whostmgr <defunct>]
root      2358     1  0 05:14 pts/0    00:00:00 [whostmgr <defunct>]
root      2412     1  0 05:17 ?        00:00:00 [mysql <defunct>]
root      2417     1  0 05:17 ?        00:00:00 [spamc <defunct>]
root      2440  1947  0 05:22 pts/0    00:00:00 grep defunct
On each reboot the zombie process that is first created seems to be random.

I'm also using cPanel/WHM and it tells me that a process called "init" is using up 99% of my CPU. I wonder if this means that I have a buggy init.

Does anyone have any suggestions about what I could do?

Thanks.

 

 

 

 

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