05-21-2010
defunct processes?
HiI had a tool fail recently, on analysis I found it was cleaning up orphaned directories that had been created by specific processes that had died for some reason, thus failing to clean up after themselves.The directories were of the form /dir.pid. The tool would look to see if any instances of the process were running under that pid and if not would clear away the directory. It was failing because intermmittently it was seeing a instance of the pid in the ps output.I put a trap in for this (grep -vi) and all seemed well but I have now seen it fail once more, unfortunately with no trace on. I cannot replicate it as it is now so intermittent with the fix I mentioned in place.My question is "Are there any other ways a dead process can show up in the ps output and if so what should I be grepping for"?CheersPS Sorry if the format of this post is rough, my work PC is locked down and doesn't seem able to handle the java very well.
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ptree(1) General Commands Manual ptree(1)
NAME
ptree - prints the process tree hierarchy
SYNOPSIS
[pid1|username1 [pid2|username2]...]
DESCRIPTION
prints the process tree of all processes that match the specified arguments. While printing the tree, the child processes are indented to
the right from their respective parent processes.
Options
Prints the tree starting from the children of
(usually pid 0). The default is to print the tree starting from the children of (pid 1).
Operands
pid Print the process tree for the process ID number specified by pid.
username Print the process tree for all the processes from the user specified by username. Note that only username (and not user ID) can
be specified for this instance.
If no operands are specified, then prints the process tree of all processes starting from the children of or (if is specified).
EXTERNAL INFLUENCES
Environment Variables
If is not specified or is null, it defaults to (see lang(5)).
EXAMPLES
Print the process tree for pid 100 and for all processes owned by
WARNINGS
Process information can change while is running; the tree displayed by is only a snapshot in time. Some data printed for defunct processes
is irrelevant.
Users of must not rely on the exact field widths and spacing of its output, as these will vary depending on the system and the release of
HP-UX.
SEE ALSO
pgrep(1), pkill(1), ps(1), fork(2).
ptree(1)