Automatically remove zombie processes from Workbench

Abstract

How to automatically terminate spawned zombie processes from Posit Workbench

Description

On Workbench, code run by developers may spawn additional processes. Upon termination of the primary process, child processes may not be removed, resulting in “zombie processes”.

Solution

Workbench can be configured to remove child processes when RStudio Pro sessions exit.

Update the Workbench configuration:

/etc/rstudio/rsession.conf

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

From there, restart the Workbench and Launcher services:

Terminal

sudo rstudio-server restart
sudo rstudio-launcher restart

This change will apply to newly created RStudio Pro sessions. Any existing zombie processes will need to be removed by killing the parent process if possible, or by rebooting the server.