High load problem

[Johan Barelds]

Hi all,

At one of our servers whe do have a application problem. The application produces every now and then processess which eat up the processor capacity and therefor generating a extremely high load. At the end the server stops totaly.

The supplier of the application is working on the problem but this will take a while.

Does someone know a workaround e.g. to stop/kill such a process?

Thanks!

Grz. Bo320

[Fred Ruffet]

The better solution would be prm. But it's not free. It would offer you a way to block CPU usage by a process.

Are the processes that "eat" your CPU are running the good way, or are they doing a good job sometimes ?

Regards,

Fred

[Steve Steel]

Hi

I am with the PRM as the best solution.

Killing depends on what the process is doing.
If non reenterant I/O it will not react on a kill signal

From kill man

signum signame Name Description
___________________________________________________________________________
0 SIGNULL Null Check access to pid
1 SIGHUP Hangup Terminate; can be trapped
2 SIGINT Interrupt Terminate; can be trapped
3 SIGQUIT Quit Terminate with core dump; can be trapped
9 SIGKILL Kill Forced termination; cannot be trapped
15 SIGTERM Terminate Terminate; can be trapped
24 SIGSTOP Stop Pause the process; cannot be trapped
25 SIGTSTP Terminal stop Pause the process; can be trapped
26 SIGCONT Continue Run a stopped process



Try kill -24 or -25 . Then if the process can go kill -9 else kill -26 to restart it

If you overload SIGSTOP -24 will lower the load until other processes finish

Go for PRM though then next time you already have a solution

overview
This book describes HP Process Resource Manager (PRM), which is a resource management tool that allows system administrators to fine-tune how resources are used on a server. This enables the administrator to ensure that critical applications and users get system resources in a timely manner.


Steve Steel

[Johan Barelds]

Fred: the processes are doing a good job most of the time.

Do you have any links/info about PRM?
Sounds interesting.

Thanks.

Gz. Bo320

[Ted Buis]

http://www.software.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=B3835DATRY

Otherwise, nice it an reboot periodically????
You might try to see what the problem is by using tusc or glance, to see if there is some resource that needs expansion.

[Brian Hackley]

Hi,

Other performance tools to look at:
Check out prospect and ttv at the HP Developer Resource web:

http://h21007.www2.hp.com/dspp/dld/dld_DownloadsListingPage_IDX/1,2381,11169,00.html

HTH, Brian H.