Logged In: YES 
user_id=31435

Whether you're off the hook depends on whether you're 
determined to be <wink>.  I don't run on Unixish systems, so 
I'm not a lot of use here.

The problem you've had with unkillable subprocesses also 
affects Zope, and you'll recall that the zdaemon business tries 
to keep Zope sites running via signal cruft.  As people have 
tried to move from Python 2.1 to Python 2.3, they're 
discovering that Zope sites fail hard because of the signal-
blocking added after 2.1:  "when an external python module 
segfaults during a zope request ... the remaining worker 
threads are deadlocked", from

http://tinyurl.com/2qslw

and zdaemon doesn't do its job then.

Andrew has in mind a scheme for not blocking "synchronous" 
signals, which makes sense to me, but I'm out of touch with 
this stuff.  If you can't review it, who can?  It would sure be 
nice to get a resolution into 2.3.4, although I understand that 
may be perceived as too risky.  The alternative from my 
immediate POV is that people running Zope-based apps on 
some Unixish systems stay away from Python 2.3, which is a 
real shame.  For that matter, unless this is resolved, I 
suppose they'll stay away from Python 2.4 too.