process in square brackets

[emerany]

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"?

[Greg Yates]

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

[Johan Brusche]

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_

[emerany]

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?

[Ralf Puchner]

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 ;-)