PID Question

[luisb03]

Hello All,

Quick question..I noticed that one of my servers every time a new process is forked the PID number is over 2 million. I do a ps -ef|more...all the processes are over > 200,000. The server runs fine...but should I be alarmed?

Thanks in advance,

Lou

 

[aixmurderer]

Has the server being up for a long time?
PID's are unique, so the same PID will never be re-used until the server gets rebooted.

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[luisb03]

Thanks for the response; the server has been up for only 4 days. The machine runs fine...its just a bit alarming seeing pid's over 2,000,000.

 

[sbix]

If you execute "ps -ef|grep defunct|grep -v grep|wc -l" which is the output?
If you execute "vmstat -f;sleep 60;vmstat -f" which is the difference between the 2 values?

 

[letis]

wouldn't you be using a 64 bits kernel ? in 32 bit kernel PID are somethjing like 10346, but they are more long under a 64 bit environment.

You can check with
bootinfo -K

or

getconf KERNEL_BITMODE (Aix 5.2)

Note : it's recommended not to install a 64 bits kernel unless you know you need it )

 

[luisb03]

The output from "ps -ef|grep defunct|grep -v grep|wc -l"..
0

The out from "vmstat -f;sleep 60;vmstat -f"..
14136 forks
14138 forks


bootinfo -K
64

So based on Letis comments I am assuming that the pid's string is so large based on the fact that the kernel is running 64 bit..correct?

Thanks for all your responses,

Lou

 

[letis]

That's it.

In the svmon man page, you've got a sample svmon output taken from a 64 bit system, you will see that PID>200000 and that the Esid columns have huge values, compared to those you get on a 32 bit system (something like 7000000 instead of values betwwen 0 and 0e); search the string 278620 in the man page to find the sample, it's at point 20.

regards

 

[sbix]

you had only 2 forks in a minute and a fork each 24/25 seconds .... you haven't to complain ... everything is fine and shining