topic Deleting a nonexistent process in Operating System - OpenVMS

Deleting a nonexistent process

Jason_429 — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:23:28 GMT

We have a process that has the tape drive allocated, however when i try to delete that process i get a non existing process error message.

Here is a brief listing of what i have encountered.

$ show dev mka600/fu
error count 0
owner process ""
Owner process id 0000C51B

$ stop/id=0000C51B
%SYSTEM-W-NONEXPR, nonexistent process

Any help is appreciated as vms help and the web have not yielded any solutions.

Re: Deleting a nonexistent process

labadie_1 — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:07:15 GMT

Hello

You have not given the architecture (Vax, Alpha, Itanium), and the Vms version.

Anyway, a system with the latest patches should not exhibit this problem.

The best source I know about the rwast process is
http://www.pottsoft.com/home/vms/rwast.html

Try the cure for the tape device allocated to a non-existent process, and eventually go to

"But really folks, "simply" disable the resource wait for the process and let it die off:

* Get the Process Control Block (PCB) address of the target process.

* Set the PCB$M_SSRWAIT bit in PCB$L_STS.

* Clear the PCB$M_DELPEN bit in PCB$L_STS.

* Issue another $DELPRC to the process..."

Try the code, but be aware that a mistake will crash the system :-)

Good luck.

Re: Deleting a nonexistent process

Jason_429 — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:18:38 GMT

They system is an alphaserver 1200 running 8.3 I believe they are up to date on patches but i guess i will have to check.

Thanks for your help i will read up on it and try it when the system is not in use.

Re: Deleting a nonexistent process

Hoff — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:31:00 GMT

This looks like it might be a dangling ownership, and not a non-existent process.

You may be down-revision on your OpenVMS patches and/or on your OpenVMS version (or both), or (potentially) somebody here has been working with SHARE privileges here.

Most cases of this I'm aware of were fixed in the mid V7.* range, though there were apparently various paths into this particular chasm.

If/when you should decide to reboot this system to clear this device ownership, I'd suggest taking the opportunity to bring your OpenVMS system up to current revision and current ECO kits.

There's an old CSCPAT tool CSCPAT_0245_USE_WITH_CAUTION_MTDISMOUNT.EXE
around and this or its descendant tool can probably be obtained from the HP support center if you can't scrounge a copy from elsewhere.

Basically, this tool or its descendants will clobber the kernel-mode USB cells related to drive ownership. (And I and other folks posted up code that patches the kernel for various purposes.) And these tools can potentially lead to a crash.

There have been various discussions over the years around an OpenVMS-integrated tool that allows this to be cleared, but I don't recall if such ever slipped out into the wild.

The most reliable and fastest approach to clear this is to reboot. (The unsupported tools might -- might -- lead to corruptions or system crashes.)

Re: Deleting a nonexistent process

Jason_429 — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:28:24 GMT

Thanks Hoff
After reading up on dangling ownership i have decided to just reboot the system this weekend after updating VMS :)

Re: Deleting a nonexistent process

Jason_429 — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:29:16 GMT

Reboot will take care of it