ps showing inconsistent process start time Post: 302376846

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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting ps showing inconsistent process start time Post 302376846 by jstrangfeld on Wednesday 2nd of December 2009 12:15:43 PM

12-02-2009

Registered User

ps showing inconsistent process start time

Not sure if it makes a difference but "foo" is a java process. The start time reported by various flavors of ps seems to be flopping back and forth by a minute.

I have many (a few hundred) "foo" like processes which tend to be somewhat unstable and get restarted somewhat frequently, I wrote a script auditing each process and its startup time sticking it into a file and diffing it against the previous iteration of the same script, if they are different I send an email to inform the support team "hey foo restarted on this server". Naturally if a process flip flops like this I generate inaccurate emails.

Only a couple of processes show the below behavior I don't believe its related to the process but some oddity how ps works.

Anyone have an idea what the cause may be?

All the bellow are within a few seconds of each others:

Code:

[root@foo ~]# ps -e -www -o stime,cmd |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $NF,$1}'
foo 01:21
[root@foo ~]# ps -e -www -o stime,cmd |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $NF,$1}'
foo 01:21
[root@foo ~]# ps -e -www -o stime,cmd |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $NF,$1}'
foo 01:21
[root@foo ~]# ps -e -www -o stime,cmd |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $NF,$1}'
foo 01:20
[root@foo ~]# ps -e -www -o stime,cmd |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $NF,$1}'
foo 01:20
[root@foo ~]# ps -e -www -o stime,cmd |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $NF,$1}'
foo 01:21

[root@foo ~]# ps -aef |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $5,$NF}'
01:20 foo
[root@foo ~]# ps -aef |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $5,$NF}'
01:20 foo
[root@foo ~]# ps -aef |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $5,$NF}'
01:20 foo
[root@foo ~]# ps -aef |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $5,$NF}'
01:21 foo
[root@foo ~]# ps -aef |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $5,$NF}'
01:21 foo
[root@foo ~]# ps -aef |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $5,$NF}'
01:21 foo
[root@foo ~]# ps -aef |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $5,$NF}'
01:21 foo
[root@foo ~]# ps -aef |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $5,$NF}'
01:21 foo
[root@foo ~]# ps -aef |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $5,$NF}'
01:21 foo
[root@foo ~]# ps -aef |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $5,$NF}'
01:21 foo
[root@foo ~]# ps -aef |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $5,$NF}'
01:20 foo

[root@foo ~]# ps auxwww |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $9,$NF}'
01:21 foo
[root@foo ~]# ps auxwww |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $9,$NF}'
01:21 foo
[root@foo ~]# ps auxwww |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $9,$NF}'
01:20 foo
[root@foo ~]# ps auxwww |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $9,$NF}'
01:20 foo
[root@foo ~]# ps auxwww |grep foo|grep -v grep |awk '{print $9,$NF}'
01:21 foo

[root@foo ~]# ps -aef |grep foo |grep -v grep|awk '{print $2}'
17857
[root@foo ~]# ls -l /proc/ |egrep 17857
dr-xr-xr-x   5 foo foo           0 Dec  2 01:20 17857

[root@dxpomsagt06 ~]# uname -a
Linux foo 2.6.9-89.ELsmp #1 SMP Mon Apr 20 10:33:05 EDT 2009 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Last edited by pludi; 12-02-2009 at 01:48 PM.. Reason: code tags, please...

jstrangfeld

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zegrep

ZGREP(1)                                                      General Commands Manual                                                     ZGREP(1)

NAME

       zgrep - search possibly compressed files for a regular expression

SYNOPSIS

       zgrep [ grep_options ] [ -e ] pattern filename...

DESCRIPTION

       Zgrep  invokes  grep  on  compressed  or  gzipped  files.   These  grep  options  will  cause  zgrep  to  terminate  with  an  error  code:
       (-[drRzZ]|--di*|--exc*|--inc*|--rec*|--nu*).  All other options specified are passed directly to grep.  If no file is specified,  then  the
       standard input is decompressed if necessary and fed to grep.  Otherwise the given files are uncompressed if necessary and fed to grep.

       If the GREP environment variable is set, zgrep uses it as the grep program to be invoked.

EXIT CODE

       2 - An option that is not supported was specified.

AUTHOR

       Charles Levert (charles@comm.polymtl.ca)

SEE ALSO

       grep(1), gzexe(1), gzip(1), zdiff(1), zforce(1), zmore(1), znew(1)

                                                                                                                                          ZGREP(1)