What did you do before the bug happened? (Steps to reproduce your issue) Run the command: ps aux Observe no ssh processes running on system. Run git clone against a non-existent hostname: git clone -v --depth=1 -b 3.23.66 ssh://*****@*****lab-prod.server.sim.cloud/terraform/modules/aws-eks /tmp/dest Observe the command fails with: Could not resolve hostname *****lab-prod.server.sim.cloud: Name or service not known Run: ps aux Observe a defunct ssh process is left behind. What did you expect to happen? (Expected behavior) I expected the command to quit without leaving any processes behind. What happened instead? (Actual behavior) The command quit and left a defunct ssh process on the system. What's different between what you expected and what actually happened? I don't want zombie processes left after any git command (either failed or not). Anything else you want to add: These processes are zombie orphaned, meaning we're stuck with them until system reboot (which is bad). Please review the rest of the bug report below. You can delete any lines you don't wish to share. [System Info] git version: git version 2.40.1 cpu: aarch64 no commit associated with this build sizeof-long: 8 sizeof-size_t: 8 shell-path: /bin/sh compiler info: gnuc: 7.3 libc info: glibc: 2.26 $SHELL (typically, interactive shell): <unset> [Enabled Hooks] not run from a git repository - no hooks to show