topic Re: process in square brackets in Operating System - Tru64 Unix

process in square brackets

emerany — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 10:13:14 GMT

Hi

We are monitoring the oracle "ora_dbw0_sid" process. Every now and then we get a flase alert to say that this process is down because it changes its name from "ora_dbw0_sid" to "[oracle]".

What causes the process to change its name to "[oracle]"? and why?

also, are there any arguments that I can use with ps so that it will always show the the process as "ora_dbw0_sid"?

Re: process in square brackets

Greg Yates — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 12:58:34 GMT

Hi,

The 'why' is a long story and has to do with the table() system call. But the main thing is that sometimes we don't get the command name and when that happens we use the brackets.

Also, from the man page of ps on V5.1B:

-f Attempts to generate a full listing. Under certain circumstances, the
-f option does not return the full path and arguments of a process.
Instead, it will return a bracketed process name such as
[process_name]. This behavior conforms with the XPG4 standard.

My suggestion, if you want to use ps for this, test to see if the process is bracketed and if it is, run ps again (add a counter so you don't just sit and loop should you get lots of these in a row :).

Greg

Re: process in square brackets

Johan Brusche — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 16:29:31 GMT

You do not mention OS version nor patchlevel, but in V5.1B with patchkit#2 there was a problem with the table() function, that made the [process] syndrom a lot more frequent than normal.
Installing patchkit#4 would cure that issue.

_Johan_

Re: process in square brackets

emerany — Thu, 30 Sep 2004 01:21:27 GMT

Thanks for the answers.

I am running 5.1B PK3, and will be upgrding to PK4 in the near future.

So, like Johan says, hopefully after I upgrade to PK4 it won't happen so frequently anymore?

Re: process in square brackets

Ralf Puchner — Thu, 30 Sep 2004 02:51:18 GMT

this question was made before, please use the search function for further information and how to solve it.....

Hopefully the search function is not too complicated clicking 3 items ;-)