Zombie process using 100% CPU

Solution 1:

The process has already been reparented to init, so it should be being reaped (otherwise, the solution would likely be to kill its parent). It appears to be stuck in exit, based on the WCHAN field.

It may actually be doing something (like creating a core dump) that will finish and it will go away on its own. Unfortunately, it's likely spinning in the kernel because of a broken driver and ultimately, your only option will be to reboot.

Solution 2:

Have you tried sudo kill -SIGCHLD 1? If this doesn't work, you'll need to reboot the system.

More on this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6335730/zombie-process-cant-be-killed and https://serverfault.com/questions/89759/init-never-reaping-zombie-defunct-processes

Solution 3:

Zombie processes have died but have not yet been cleaned up (reaped is the correct term) and thus kill does not work on them like a normal process. The process is still in the process table but when it is a zombie, resources have been de-allocated.

You can try sending a SIGCHLD signal to the process parent, otherwise init should have picked it up and will reap it eventually. If you want to speed up the process you can just simply reboot.