usd process and its zombies

[Sri123]

Hi All,

This is my issue:

My HP-UX 11.11 server crashed 3 to 4 times over the last 3 months, and i just found that it was the usd process which is creating so many defunct process and they are not terminating and filling up the nproc table. Hence the system hangs again once in a month.

I know that these defunct or the zombies cant be removed unless we kill the parent process or reboot the machine.

My question is:

If i kill the usd process, will it cause the application outage? If no, any alternatives to resolve this problem?

The application team doesn't seem to know about the usd process. Going forward, i just found it is a spooler daemon but i am just reluctant to kill this process and free up the proc table.

Worthy answers will be appreciated

Thanks & Regards
Sridhar

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Sridar:

I am not familiar with any 'usd' spooler daemon. It sounds as if it is third-party software that is badly written.

Either a kill of the zombie parent process or a reboot, as you noted, is the only way to remove the useless entries from your process table. If you can't run any "good" processes, then it seems like either of these choices is all you have.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Dennis Handly]

>If I kill the usd process, will it cause the application outage?

Who owns the usd process? If it IS the application, it will cause an outage.
If there is a graceful shutdown and restart options, use that.

As in the case of all zombie masters, is it better to you dead or alive?

>I just found it is a spooler daemon but I am just reluctant to kill this process and free up the proc table.

A spooler for what product?
Does it allow you to stop it? (Especially when nothing is printing?)

[Sri123]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies!

We just managed to kill this usd process (which freed up the nproc table). We just didnt had any problem after doing so. Now, i am looking at how to fix this permanently, as it might start up at every boot.

There is nothing in /sbin/init.d directory and just wondering how to fix this one.

Kindly share if you have any idea about this!

Regards
Sridhar

[Dennis Handly]

>I am looking at how to fix this permanently,

That would be by changing the source of the broken application.
Or add bigger bandaid by increasing nproc a lot.
Or restart usd every so often.