>any idea whats going on ? How do I get rid of these zombie
>processes ?
>
I can't help you with the cause, but the only way to get rid of zombies(you can't kill them(they're already dead)) is to kill the parent process. The ownership of the zombies goes to init(PID 1), which immediately reclaims them. So, if you start running into max process problems, you can do that(if possible).