hundreds of dtscreen/dtexec processes

[u102768]

Hi

This is something that has bugged me for a long time. I am mainly an hpux support person but we do have the odd RS6000 running aix 4.3.3. We seem to have hundreds (381 at the moment) of dtexec process running. Is this normal? If not any clues as to how to stop them appearing. The server last appears to have been rebooted on the 25th August 2001 and the majority of the dtexec processes appeared on the 26th and 27th October.

Any thoughts?

Regards

Richard

 

[tsuba]

Hi,

dtexec is a process that apears when you user some applications in CDE environment (like dtterm, dtfile). That means that if you have 300 "dt" terminals opened, then you will have 300 "dtexec" processes. If that's what happening to you, so it's normal (that I doubt). If you have remote XDMCP connections in CDE environments with lots of users that may be normal too. But my suggestion to find out is to use "who -u" and find which connections are lost and kill them (second colum from right to left id the PID). that will kill "lost" dtexec processes. Another way is to track down the most Parent process of lost dtexec process.
dtlogin=>dtsession=>dtwm=>dtexec. Probably you will find an dtlogin as parent Process.

HTT

 

[u102768]

tsuba

Thanks for the reply. I believe that there are only one or two users that use a CDE environment on this server as the application is an Oracle one with connection via sqlnet. If

If I do a ps -ef and grep for the dtexec sessions all but one (from today) has a pid of 1. who -u only shows 6 people logged in and three of those are me via telnet. It just seems strange that most of the processes were created on the same day.

 

[tsuba]

Richard

the PPID 1 means that the process for some reason "lost" its Parent and as a consequence, "lost" its controling process. Normally you can kill these processes once they are not working as well. Note: every time that "something" kills a process's parent and didn't know that that happened, the init process takes control( that's the reason that your dtexec processes have PPID 1).

HTT

 

[u102768]

tsuba

Thanks for the quick reply. I know some daemons have a pid of 1 and not knowing much about these dt processes made me nervous about killing them. It still leaves the mystery of where they came from in the first place. I will kill them and monitor the situation.

Thanks for your help.

Regards

Richard