As the subject suggests, I have a "two-fold" questions:

( 1 ) Zombies - it appears that after running a few days in Knoppix, v3.4, with kernel 2.6.6, I begin to get zombie processes. The one that bugs me the most is a smail process. What appears to happen is, the system boots up a single smail process, and then starts a second smail process, the first process goes zombie, and lists out in a ps -auxww as never using any process / usage time, and shows as <defunct> -=- the hard thing about all of this is, if I kill the <defunct> smail process, within a few minutes, the smail process that was running, goes <defunct> and creates a new smail process... Output of the ps -auxww command is below, has anyone any clues why this is happening, or a resolve???
Code:
root      9294  0.0  0.1  2284  996 ?        Ss   09:52   0:00 /usr/sbin/smail -bd -q10m
root      9295  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        Zs   09:52   0:00 [smail] <defunct>
( 2 ) Security - after reading a System Administrator book on Linux, mostly about Red Hat distro, I am worried about the random acts of security intrusion that someone may decide to "pick on" any system they feel is "fun". I have a firewall program running ( guarddog ), and I have nothing checked in the "receive" from internet, and only what I need on the "sending" checked ( mostly ftp, http, auth, pop3, and smtp )... I have even had someone check my IP address when I enter a chat room, when it shows where I am coming from, and that "address" is showing up as something that isnt even recognizable as an IP address... My question is, even with a firewall, someone can "tunnel" under that firewall, right? I know many "security" posts have been made in this, and the other, forums, but, short of never connecting to the internet, how can one ensure that they are as "secure" as they can be?

I have gone to the "Shields Up" test site, and most of the time, I just get an error that the site can not display a page, when I ask it to test, is that a good sign?

Ever since I moved to Linux, through Knoppix, the idea of running my system for days, weeks, and even months, at a time, has been a blessing, but, as I have found out, it isnt when I get zombies showing up, and intrusions ( possible ), though I have yet to find that I have been "picked on" by anyone - cant imagine why, I really dont have anything that interesting on my system anyway...

Thanks for any advice, ideas, or suggestions, on these matters,
Ms. Cuddles