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ps showing inconsistent process start time

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# 1  
Old 12-02-2009
Question 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...
# 2  
Old 12-03-2009
i wonder, .... oh i am also able to see this time difference for my processes.

at different times, it flips by one minute ? does anybody know the reason ?

Code:
$ uname -a
Linux Aristo33 2.6.26-2-686 #1 SMP Fri Aug 14 01:27:18 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

# 3  
Old 12-03-2009
Well glad to see I am not alone. Anyone else have any thoughts / suggestions where to go from here?
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