We've had the same issue using pbuilder for several years. We're running 1.513 now, but we've been seeing this issue for a long time.
Jobs end up with orphaned process trees like this:
root 32018 0.0 0.0 53788 1524 ? S 08:50 0:00 sudo pbuilder execute --basetgz /var/cache/pbuilder/jenkins_tools.precise.am
root 32019 0.0 0.1 12824 1812 ? S 08:50 0:00 \_ /bin/bash /usr/sbin/pbuilder execute --basetgz /var/cache/pbuilder/jenki
root 10649 0.0 0.0 9424 1256 ? S 08:50 0:00 \_ /bin/bash -ex /runscript doc
root 10656 0.1 1.3 75456 24148 ? S 08:50 0:36 | \_ python /home/rosbuild/hudson/workspace/doc-fuerte-tum/jenkins_sc
root 9009 0.0 0.0 9768 1692 ? S 16:55 0:00 | \_ bash -c source /opt/ros/fuerte/setup.bash && export PYTHONPA
root 9026 1.1 1.3 61092 22904 ? S 16:55 0:00 | \_ /usr/bin/python /usr/local/bin/rosdoc_lite /home/rosbuil
root 9027 52.0 18.6 350096 327324 ? D 16:55 0:43 | \_ doxygen /tmp/tmpwC1LwG
root 9365 0.0 0.0 4308 352 ? S 16:56 0:00 \_ sleep 5s
Where the pbuilder process used to be a subprocess of the script being run by jenkins.
However you can see that jenkins is in a separate process tree:
root 747 0.0 0.0 49948 244 ? Ss Apr16 0:01 /usr/sbin/sshd -D
root 12760 0.0 0.0 92224 372 ? Ss Apr30 0:00 \_ sshd: rosbuild [priv]
rosbuild 12904 0.0 0.0 92408 528 ? S Apr30 0:50 | \_ sshd: rosbuild@notty
rosbuild 12918 0.0 0.0 12296 228 ? Ss Apr30 0:00 | \_ bash -c cd '/home/rosbuild/hudson' && java -jar slave.jar
rosbuild 12919 0.1 4.4 1598760 77928 ? Sl Apr30 1:55 | \_ java -jar slave.jar
root 9084 0.0 0.2 90164 4052 ? Ss 16:56 0:00 \_ sshd: root@pts/3
root 9281 0.5 0.3 24056 5300 pts/3 Ss 16:56 0:00 \_ -bash
root 9366 0.0 0.0 18128 1200 pts/3 R+ 16:56 0:00 \_ ps auxf
We're running a linux master and slaves with SSH Slaves plugin 0.23
I have the same issue with following configuration
Jenkins 1.461 on Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition using build in winstone
SSH slave plugin 0.21
Slave running on AIX IBM Java 1.6
Process started wsadmin.sh (scripting environment from Websphere Application Server 8.0)