Startup programs and inodes in Var

[Mike Rightmire]

Hey Gang,

I am having difficulty with Informix and the Var directory. Informix opens a series of oninit processes which touch the /var directory through an open inode (there is no file). The inode is using raw space on the hard drive, and the amount of the space usage is constantly increasing.

I do realize that ALL processes that run on the HP box touch the /var directory at some point while running. My question is, how and why do all processes touch the /var directory? Is there a document which describes this process?

ALSO, Informix is NOT setup to start when the system boots, however immediately after a boot when I check the memory by using the "ipcs" command, there is a memory segment and a semaphore segment started by Informix (Informix has to be started by an account named Informix.)

What are the files which determine what software and processes are created at startup and how can I properly edit these files to control what is started and how it is started?

Thanks again for all the help!
Mike

[Patrick Wallek]

All deamons, services, programs, etc. that are started automatically when HP-UX starts up are started via script in the /sbin/init.d directory. The scripts are run when HP-UX goes from one run level to another and that is controlled by /sbin/rc?.d (rc1.d, rc2.d, rc3.d) directories. All of these directories have entries like S123script, S124script or K321Script, K421Script, which are linked to the scripts in the /sbin/init.d directory. The S (start) scripts are executed when the system is coming up.

I would look in /sbin/init.d for a script that has Informix somewhere in the name.

All system scripts also have a configuration file in /etc/rc.config.d that lets you set an environment variable that controls whether a service (sendmail, for example) is started or not. You could also look in this directory and see if there is anything Informix related.

You should probably also look at the /etc/rc.log file and see if there is anything in it about Informix. All rc script output is, or at least is supposed to be, logged to that file.

Good luck and good hunting.

P.S. Have you placed a call to Informix tech support about this? That may be an option for you too.