MAIL_########## processes in SUSP state

[Matthew Booth]

Looking to find the root cause of mail processes in SUSP state in cluster running OPENVMS Alpha V7.3-2.

Thanks in advance,
Matt

[Ian Miller.]

If they really are in SUSP state then something put them in that state - its not a state you can get into involuntarily.

[Hoff · Accepted solution]

Check the setting of OpenVMS system security auditing, and particularly whether system auditing has selected the suspend status when it can't log events. This setting is configurable. You'll need to figure out why auditing got jammed up. The usual trigger involves insufficient free disk space for the audit logs, but there are other causes. There are various other triggers, such as audit storms.

The SET and SHOW AUDIT commands are the key, and there's a section in the security manual on managing process suspension and audit resource monitoring.

The other approach involves folks that have aimed suspend commands at the processes, though this situation is unlikely.

If you're not sure of what triggered the suspension of these processes (and it wasn't auditing and its resource monitoring), you can enable auditing for the suspend system service.

(You can email me offline -- um, maybe from a system that doesn't have a jammed-up mail system :-) -- if you want to discuss this.)

Stephen Hoffman
HoffmanLabs

[Matthew Booth]

It was the audit server that hose me.

Thanks,
Matt