Apparently Docker are aware of this problem, but putting a huge Python init process in there is just evil. https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/11529 https:

Apparently Docker are aware of this problem, but putting a huge Python init process in there is just evil. https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/11529 https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/11529 And the problem appears in such edge cases that it is doubtfully worthy of so much attention. When a pid-1 process spawns daemons, that in turn leave orphaned zombies - this pid-1 will get assigned with them. (described in 'man 7 pid_namespaces') Supposedly this non-init pid1 is not reaping orphaned zombies, which might get the namespace to pid_max (33k default) and run out of pids to use.