fuser hangs up on HP-UX 11.31

[Paolo_Ortenzi]

Dear Colleagues,

Our Sysadmin team is managing an Itanium BL390 with HP-UX 11.31.

On this server has been attached disks from a XP24K SAN and is running Oracle R12 EBS/rdbms applications.

Problem: everytime we run the command fuser, it takes ages before having a response, like in the case of this test I made:

root@udvdbs04:/# time fuser -u /opt
/opt:

real 19:54.7
user 0.1
sys 18:57.2

is there any solution to this problem?

Especially when using Oracle OUI to install/clone DB instances or making upgrades can take days to perform a single task, since the OUI uses fuser to check that the needed filesystem is not locked by a process.

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi:

There is a recent patch to 'fuser'. You might apply
PHCO_41834 and see if this fixes your issue.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Paolo_Ortenzi]

Dear Fergusson, thanks I will install it and I'll test if this is the solution.

Thanks

Paolo Ortenzi

[Paolo_Ortenzi]

Looks like we DID NOT solve the problem after the installation of the patch.

I made just a test:

root:/# time fuser /home
/home:

real 18:37.4
user 0.1
sys 18:28.7

It is way TOO MUCH...

[Chris Wilshaw]

We've recently had the same issue although taht was in PA-RISC servers running HP-UX 11.11, and it turned out to be a problem caused by the utild daemon.

As a short term fix, you can just kill utild, and it will restart itself automatically.

The updated version of the software which solved it for us can be found at

https://h20392.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=UTILPROVIDER

[Paolo_Ortenzi]

Dear Chris,

I tried to kill the utild daemon after launching (if I understand correctly...) the fuser.

The fuser command (same test I did previously to have a valid benchmark) on /home did not return the prompt but after a LONG time.

[Turgay Cavdar]

Hi,
Have you try to run the command with tusc? You may see which step it is waiting for?

#tusc -fp -ea -o /tmp/tusc.out fuser -u /opt

[Paolo_Ortenzi]

on HP UX 11v3 for Itanium, no tusc command installed.

[Viktor Balogh]

you can download it from here

http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Sysadmin/tusc-8.0/

[Paolo_Ortenzi]

I just made a test on my Itanium Integrity server, and I say on TOP that fuser takes more than 100% CPU and it runs steadily at that level.

This does NOT happens on all the rest of the PA-RISC servers that run HP UX 11v1

[Viktor Balogh]

this seems to be a related thread

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/System-Administration/fuser-uses-too-much-CPU/m-p/4606069#M376266

[Siju Jose_1]

Hi

We had the same problem, we applied the following patch to fix it.

PHCO_40769 1.0 fuser(1M) Command patch

Regards
Siju

[Dennis Handly]

>on HP UX 11v3 for Integrity

That doesn't have the utild problem.

>Viktor: this seems to be a related thread

Exactly, that's the problem I helped triage and point to dld.sl.

[Paolo_Ortenzi]

Dear jose I already applied a fuser patch that is more recent that the one you suggested.

Are you implying that we must downpatch our Integrity server?

[INH]

This issue i faced on HPUX 11.11 OS, but looks like you are running 11.31, substitute the exact patch for 11.31 OS

== > Command â #ps â ef |grep â i utildâ shows that â utildâ process is running.

root 884 1 9 Aug 22 ? 1222:09 /usr/lbin/utild

== > Stopping utild will solve this issue temporally, fuser causing memory leak.

The issue is due to Utild(1M) trying to shl_load(3X) files that do not exist, which triggers a memory leak in dld on some configurations causing the utild(1M) process to accumulate thousands of private 8k mmap(2)ped regions, which in turn cause fuser(1M) to run slowly on such a system


== > Issue has been fixed in patch "PHSS_xxxx 1.0 ld(1) and linker tools cumulative patch ".0 ld(1) and linker tools cumulative patch "

Action Plan:
===========
1. Stop the â utildâ process temporary
2. Check the status of the â fuserâ process. If required kill it and try to execute once again.
3. Download the patch â PHSS_xxxxâ and install
4. Restart the utild process if required and check for fuser command.

NOTE: Installation of this patch doesnâ t require server reboot

HTH

[Dennis Handly]

>Are you implying that we must downpatch our Integrity server?

No, it only happens on PA systems.
Or if you have a PA application making the same mistake utild did and run it under Aries.

[Paolo_Ortenzi]

I don't have this problem on PA systems but on Itanium architecture systems.

Anyway, it seems related to how the Oracle OUI calls the fuser when upgrading/patching Oracle.

When the installation of the ugrading patches ended, fuser started back to work normally.