Problem with interfaces and ioctl

[André Cruz]

I'm having problems bringing down interfaces. Each time I use ioctl to
change the IFF_UP flag a zombie process is created.

I noticed that since I upgraded to 2.4 whenever we create an interface a
new process is created and it's PPID is the creating process. But when I
try to bring it down that process doesn't die and no sigchld is received
by it's PPID. What's worse is that when I bring that interface up again
a new process is created. 
Specifically I'm having problems using dhcpcd. After a few days this is
what I see with a ps:

 F   UID   PID  PPID PRI  NI   VSZ  RSS  WCHAN STAT TTY        TIME
COMMAND
140     0  3278     1   9   0   780  388 116c8e S    ?          0:05
/sbin/dhcpcd
044     0  7729  3278   9   0     0    0 11235d Z    ?          0:00  \_
[eth0 <defuct>]
044     0  7732  3278   9   0     0    0 11235d Z    ?          0:00  \_
[eth0 <defuct>]
044     0  8747  3278   9   0     0    0 11235d Z    ?          0:00  \_
[eth0 <defuct>]
040     0  8765  3278   9   0     0    0 16baad SW   ?          0:00  \_
[eth0]

What can I do about this? Is this not the right way to bring down an
interface?
Btw my current kernel is 2.4.7.

Thanks for the help.

----------
André Cruz