Infrastructure Software

Hi,

I've a client server system.
My client sends a message to server & starts a timer.
If the server does not respond with in the limit set by timer, timer goes off and the client shall throw an exception.

The problem is client seem to wirte the message to server socket, but it is not receiving response. Worst even, timer did n't go off. Client is indefinitely waiting.

When debugging with dbx, found that timer did go off but immediately timer thread became zombie.
Can any one tell me when can these become zombies?
One scenario is: when there is no recipient for the result from a non-detached thread. But my timer is awaited by main thread.

Especially, it operated normally for more than 24 hours..

My Client is developed in C++ & uses pthreads on Solaris.
Thanks for ur time.