On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 09:43:30 PDT, Andrew Morton said:

> ah, OK.  What happens if you do a `patch -R -p1' using
> ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.0-test6/2.6
.0-test6-mm1/broken-out/call_usermodehelper-retval-fix-2.patch ?

That fixes up the problem here as well.  Also, note that it wasn't just
the Synaptics driver:

ps alwx|grep Z
F   UID   PID  PPID PRI  NI   VSZ  RSS WCHAN  STAT TTY        TIME COMMAND
1     0   290     3   6 -10     0    0 t>     Z<   ?          0:00 [events/0 <defunct>]
1     0   292     3   5 -10     0    0 t>     Z<   ?          0:00 [events/0 <defunct>]
1     0   294     3   5 -10     0    0 t>     Z<   ?          0:00 [events/0 <defunct>]
1     0   296     3   5 -10     0    0 t>     Z<   ?          0:00 [events/0 <defunct>]
1     0   298     3   6 -10     0    0 t>     Z<   ?          0:00 [events/0 <defunct>]
1     0   300     3   6 -10     0    0 t>     Z<   ?          0:00 [events/0 <defunct>]
0     0   578     3   6 -10     0    0 do_exi Z<   ?          0:00 [ifup <defunct>]
1     0  1029     3   6 -10     0    0 t>     Z<   ?          0:00 [events/0 <defunct>]
0     0  1216     3   5 -10     0    0 ct>    Z<   ?          0:00 [net.agent <defunct>]
1     0  1227     3   5 -10     0    0 t>     Z<   ?          0:00 [events/0 <defunct>]
1     0  1229     3   6 -10     0    0 t>     Z<   ?          0:00 [events/0 <defunct>]

The ifup was probably attached to either a wireless or Xircom ethernet card,
the net.agent was probably from a PPP connection starting up (based on the PID
of the process).