FWIW, I have a very similar problem on ZITI with DECnet/Linux. Every
night when Paul's mapper would run it would leave a zombie NML process
hanging around, and after a couple of weeks I'd have to reboot to get rid of
them. I just stopped allowing NML access on ZITI for that reason.
I'm not saying that Paul's mapper is to blame - DECnet/Linux has tons of
bugs and I'm sure this is just another mistake somewhere. But it might be
that the mapper is doing something slightly different or unusual and that's
why we see these symptoms.
Bob