What does this failure look like in production?

In production this failure typically appears during the first tens-to-hundreds of training steps: loss curves become non-monotonic, validation metrics plateau above the baseline, and downstream checkpoints either diverge or fail to improve. Engineers frequently misread it as data drift when the underlying mechanism is training killed without sigterm propagated to child processes. Validating against the symptom list in this entry is the fastest way to confirm the diagnosis.

Is this a hardware or a software issue?

Reliability failures can look like either layer depending on the symptom. The discriminator is the resolution of the symptom to the recommended fix: if applying the steps under "How to fix it" eliminates the symptom, this is a software/configuration class issue regardless of the hardware it surfaced on. Repeat the fix on a fresh node to confirm.

How long does the fix typically take?

Most resolutions from this entry take 10 to 30 minutes of engineer time once the diagnosis is confirmed. Long fixes come from skipping the diagnosis step and chasing apparent symptoms (validation drift, memory growth, slow throughput) instead of the actual root cause listed above. Apply the fix in a small experiment first, then roll it forward.

Does this affect inference or only training?

Primarily this is a reliability failure observed during training, but the same misconfiguration can leak into downstream evaluation and serving. Treat the prevention checklist as a guardrail: any pipeline that touches a trained checkpoint should re-validate the failure mode before promoting the model.

What's the cheapest way to confirm this is the problem?

Cheapest signal: reproduce the symptom on a 1-GPU toy run with the same configuration. If the toy run exhibits the same behavior, the cause is the configuration rather than the cluster. If only the multi-GPU run is affected, the failure is a distributed interaction, so SLURM job cancellation without cleanup is the most likely layer to inspect.

Can the Denpex platform detect this automatically?

Yes. Denpex correlates the symptoms in this entry against your training logs in real time and surfaces the failure taxonomy, root cause, and exact remediation command on the console. Three full diagnoses are included free during signup, and the encyclopedia entry you are reading is generated from the same signal library that powers the platform.

What related failures should I check next?

Closely related failures cluster around #zombie-process, #gpu-memory, #process-cleanup. After applying this fix, validate against the related entries below to confirm no overlapping cause is masking as this one. Engineers routinely discover that the dominant failure mode is actually a second, sibling failure compounded on top.

Will this recur after the fix?

Applied once with the prevention checklist, this failure does not recur under normal operation. The recurring variant most engineers encounter is the re-emergence of the same symptom on a different model or stack after zombie-process is upgraded. Pin compatible versions and rerun the prevention smoke test on every dependency change.

How does this scale from 1 GPU to 1000 GPUs?

At single-GPU scale the symptom usually looks like slow convergence or a single anomalous loss value. At 64+ GPU scale, distributed interactions amplify training killed without sigterm propagated to child processes through collectives, and the failure can manifest as a full job abort. Always reproduce the fix at the smallest cluster configuration that still exhibits the symptom before promoting to production scale.

Is there a fingerprint I can monitor?

Yes. Nvidia-smi shows CUDA processes that won't die is the highest-signal fingerprint. Wire a metric or alert on that signal (or its absence after the fix) so you can detect the recurrence automatically. The Denpex platform encodes this exact fingerprint and surfaces it directly in the dashboard.

What is the official documentation that covers this?

Reference documentation is listed in the References section at the bottom of this entry. The most authoritative URLs are the upstream framework docs and the issue trackers cited; the Denpex entry synthesizes both into the executive, engineer, and on-call perspectives so each audience can act without reading every linked source.

Does this entry include working code?

Yes. The "Code Examples" section contains copy-paste-ready snippets that target the most common stacks (PyTorch, Hugging Face Trainer, DeepSpeed, Megatron-LM, vLLM/Transformers). Each snippet is annotated with why it works so you can adapt the pattern to your own framework without losing fidelity.

Zombie GPU Process / Orphaned Job

Zombie processes hold GPU memory after the main job exits. Denpex auto-detects and kills them.

Quick answer

Zombie processes hold GPU memory after the main job exits.

Symptom: nvidia-smi shows CUDA processes that won't die
Root cause: Training killed without SIGTERM propagated to child processes. NCCL communicator not finalized holding GPU memory. Python multiprocessing spawn leaves child processes.
Recommended fix: Kill orphaned CUDA processes via pkill
How Denpex helps: Denpex investigates Zombie GPU Process / Orphaned Job using the evidence you provide or your connected workload collects. Earlier rank, host or application evidence is needed to distinguish an initiating failure from a downstream report.

Reliability#zombie-process#gpu-memory#process-cleanup#orphaned#reliability

What this failure is

Zombie GPU Process / Orphaned Job is a Reliability failure seen during ML training runs. Zombie processes hold GPU memory after the main job exits. Denpex auto-detects and kills them. Common tags: Zombie Process, Gpu Memory, Process Cleanup, Orphaned.

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Why it happens (the mechanism)

Training killed without SIGTERM propagated to child processes. NCCL communicator not finalized holding GPU memory. Python multiprocessing spawn leaves child processes. SSH session disconnected mid-training, leaving orphaned CUDA context. Taken together, these mechanisms explain why the failure is reproducible, why it tends to surface on specific workloads or scales, and why generic mitigation attempts often fall short without addressing the underlying cause.

What you'll observe

nvidia-smi shows GPU memory used but process is invisible
New jobs fail with CUDA OOM after killing previous job
SSH sessions show defunct Python processes

Common symptoms and what they mean

Symptom	Why it happens
nvidia-smi shows CUDA processes that won't die	Training killed without SIGTERM propagated to child processes
Training fails: address already in use	NCCL communicator not finalized holding GPU memory
GPU memory 0 bytes allocated by invisible processes	Python multiprocessing spawn leaves child processes
Stale processes left after SLURM job cancellation	SSH session disconnected mid-training, leaving orphaned CUDA context

Which systems are affected

SLURM job cancellation without cleanup
Kubernetes pod evictions
Ray actor crashes
Ctrl+C training without trap handlers

How to confirm this is the problem

Use this checklist to test the hypothesis against a small reproduction. No single line proves the root cause, so preserve the preceding events and compare one variable at a time.

✓Reproduce the failure from a clean checkpoint/seed: the symptom must appear without warm-up state from a previous run.
✓Verified signal present: nvidia-smi shows CUDA processes that won't die
✓Verified signal present: Training fails: address already in use
✓Verified signal present: GPU memory 0 bytes allocated by invisible processes
✓Verified signal present: Stale processes left after SLURM job cancellation
✓A targeted fix from the "How to fix it" section eliminates or substantially reduces the symptom within one validation pass.

Root cause

Training killed without SIGTERM propagated to child processes
NCCL communicator not finalized holding GPU memory
Python multiprocessing spawn leaves child processes
SSH session disconnected mid-training, leaving orphaned CUDA context

The fix and how to prevent it

Searchable error signature

search key

nvidia-smi shows CUDA processes that won't die
nvidia-smi shows GPU memory used but process is invisible

Use this text as a lookup key in logs and upstream issue trackers. It is not presented as a captured customer log. Confirm the cause from your own preceding events, versions, configuration and the cited references.

The fix and the prevention pattern

The root cause is on this page and stays free. A free account adds the exact remediation steps, saved history, and the fix on every entry in the encyclopedia.

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Diagnose this failure in VS Code

Select the traceback or open the failed terminal, then run Denpex locally to see the initiating rank, collateral failures, exact fix, and verification command without uploading the log.

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Related failures to investigate next

Bytedance Sequence Length Straggler often co-occurs with this failure because both share underlying assumptions about reliability; if you fix this entry but still see drift, validate the related primary cause next. bytedance sequence length straggler →

Training Checkpoint Corruption On Write often co-occurs with this failure because both share underlying assumptions about reliability; if you fix this entry but still see drift, validate the related neighboring cause next. training checkpoint corruption on write →

Wandb Tensorboard Failure often co-occurs with this failure because both share underlying assumptions about reliability; if you fix this entry but still see drift, validate the related neighboring cause next. wandb tensorboard failure →

References

Don't just read the fix, diagnose your run

The encyclopedia tells you what went wrong. Denpex tells you what went wrong in YOUR training run. With your logs, your config, and your stack.

Diagnose your logs free Compare a solved incident Browse all failures

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