Script asks for ps, result: "ps: pstat failure"

[Arthur Pols]

Dear Knowledge sharers,

I ran into a problem last week that I don't understand.

A script checks if the processes of a few programs are running, if so no messages are send.
If the processes aren't running, the script checks witch isn't running and gives a separate message for that one.

OK this is the situation on HP-UX 10.20.

The thing is that copied the script to Hp-UX 11.i and there were no changes necessary to let it run properly.
-> Only once and a while we receive a message that none of the processes are running. When we look at the system, nothing is wrong. The log of the script shows the problem: "ps: pstat failure".

(command line: ps -efx|grep b1_ml|grep -v grep > $OUTFILE )

I haven't seen this before and I can't explain it.

Can any of you explain what is happening here?
A work around could be to run the command again after a while, but I'm looking for an explanation. (Why?)

Thanks for all the input in advance.

Arthur Pols

[Dietmar Konermann]

Arthur,

This is a known problem with the -x option of the 11.11 ps command. No patch is released yet... but the problem should disappear if you omit -x option (not using the extended command line format).

BTW, are the you sure that -x worked on your 10.20 system? It's a new option...

Regards...
Dietmar.

[Arthur Pols]

Dietmar,

I'm sorry, the -x is new in 11.i (Your absolutely right!)
On the 10.20 version of this process the line was a lot shorter.
We have to use this option, we want to have the whole line (the most important part is at the end). So yes we did change it.

I get that there is no patch yet.

Any other suggestions are welcome !

Thanks !

Arthur

[Dietmar Konermann · Accepted solution]

The next ps(1) patch for 11.11 (PHCO_25605) is expected to be released in the October/November timeframe.

You should be able to get an pre-release version of that patch by logging a call with your local response center. The Defect ID is JAGad93858.

Regards...
Dietmar.

[Arthur Pols]

We have tested the new version of ps and there where no errors to be found. We are very happy with this solution. It's going into production this moth.

Thanks Dietmar for this insight information.

Arthur