What processes are bad

[drkestrel]

I am running an application server and a sybase adaptive server on Solaris, and I am trying to figure out how things crashed and how to solve/prevent problems from re-curring. Everthing is run as a Non-Root userID.

Everthing seems mysterious. I tried ps -ef trying to know which process is doing what.
the following is the format I get
F S UID PID PPID C PRI NI ADDR SZ WCHAN TTY TIME CMD

My question is
1) is 0 or 1=root for ppid?
2) If I have a corn script or executable that an ordinary user could invoke that somehow is SUable to root, how should it be indicated??
3) Semantics wise- is it normal/imperative that if a parent process is killed or 'died'/exit??, then its child would do the same??
4) Would anyone recommend anything else (that is free ) other than PS that could be usable for finding out mysterious problems....

Sorry for being so dumb but I am not used to doing this kind of stuff!

 

[ElgisRamon]

1. [tt]PPID[/tt] is the Process ID of the program that started a specific program... is not an User ID!

2. If you run a SUID root script many UNIXes won't change to to root user, if you run a SUID root binary object it won't appear on the ps output like root... then you won't notice it.

3. Yep, but some programs disconnect their children and make'em child of init, then they won't die.

4. I guess you could use [tt]top[/tt] and/or [tt]monitor[/tt]... try your nearest freeware archive...

I hope it works...

 

[slgordon]

3. A child process without a parent will show up as a <defunct> process Says the Manager to the person that invented the modem: &quot;Tell me again why you need two prototypes?!?&quot;

 

[sureshp]

Hi Elgis,
Can you tell me , In what Situations , a parent process may disconnect a child process so that a child won't die,even if the parent is killed.

Thanks,

Suresh.

 

[MikeLacey]

Suresh,

Something like this is done so that the process won't die until the system stops. Process like vhand and sendmail are like this, these are called deamon processes. That's not a mis-spelling, the 'a' is meant to be there.
Mike
michael.j.lacey@ntlworld.com

 

[billbose]

hi mike,

The 'e' however is not supposed to be there. It can be there however like 'daemon'

Regards,

Bill

 

[MikeLacey]

Ok. Good, strong, technical point there.....
Mike
michael.j.lacey@ntlworld.com