multiple processes for one program

SUSE Product Topics SLES Configure-Administer
1

Hello,
I’ve a strange behaviour at one of our Suse 9.0 server.
When I start a program (e.g. /etc/init.d/nagios, /etc/init.d/hp-health) it will startup with more then one threat.

It would look like this for hp-health:

ps -ef | grep hpasmd

root 18804 1 1 08:35 ? 00:00:00 hpasmd
root 18813 18804 0 08:35 ? 00:00:00 hpasmd
root 18814 18813 0 08:35 ? 00:00:00 hpasmd
root 18815 18813 0 08:35 ? 00:00:00 hpasmd
root 18816 18813 0 08:35 ? 00:00:00 hpasmd
root 18817 18813 0 08:35 ? 00:00:00 hpasmd
root 18818 18813 0 08:35 ? 00:00:00 hpasmd
root 18819 18813 0 08:35 ? 00:00:00 hpasmd
root 18820 18813 0 08:35 ? 00:00:00 hpasmd
root 18821 18813 0 08:35 ? 00:00:00 hpasmd
root 18822 18813 0 08:35 ? 00:00:00 hpasmd
root 18823 18813 0 08:35 ? 00:00:00 hpasmd
root 18824 18813 0 08:35 ? 00:00:00 hpasmd
root 18825 18813 0 08:35 ? 00:00:00 hpasmd

and this for nagios:

ps -ef | grep nagios

nagios 1298 1 0 Jan27 ? 00:10:13 /usr/local/nagios//bin/nagios -d /usr/local/nagios//etc/nagios.cfg
nagios 1299 1298 0 Jan27 ? 00:00:00 /usr/local/nagios//bin/nagios -d /usr/local/nagios//etc/nagios.cfg
nagios 1300 1299 0 Jan27 ? 00:00:00 /usr/local/nagios//bin/nagios -d /usr/local/nagios//etc/nagios.cfg

If I kill one of the follow up processes also the main (first) process of these program will be killed.

I’ve no clue where it came from.

I set up nagios and hp-health on several other servers but this issue is new for me and I found nothing similar by searching the Internet.

I appreciate if someone could give me some hint where I can look at to fix this behaviour.

Thank you in advance for your help.
kr
Juergen

2

Oh I forgot to post this (and I didn’t find the edit button :confused: ):

uname -a

Linux server 2.4.21-99-smp #1 SMP Wed Sep 24 13:31:14 UTC 2003 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

cat /etc/SuSE-release

SuSE Linux 9.0 (i586)
VERSION = 9.0

3

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Just guessing, on SLES 9 (which is not just a little bit old) you may be
using the old threading model which exposes individual threads as
processes all over the place. Notice that one “process” is the parent
of all of the others which likely confirms this. Even with the later
kernels you can see the various threads using something like ‘pstree’,
though it was (annoyingly) more-visible in the old days.

What does the following return?

getconf GNU_LIBPTHREAD_VERSION

Good luck.
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4

Thx for reply :wink:

Here the output you requested:

getconf GNU_LIBPTHREAD_VERSION

linuxthreads-0.10

hmm I searched for it and it seems to be a very old version :frowning:
I there any chance to do some configuration around “linuxthreads” ?

And basically a update to a newer Suse version is not that easy possible because there is a software running on it we can’t get 100% sure that this software will run on a newer Suse version :frowning:

5

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If you are unsure 100% whether or not software will work on a newer
version, why not test it? SLES can be downloaded for free from
download.novell.com (and probably download.suse.com now too) and
anything after SLES 9 should be better.

In the meantime, what is the downside to things being presented as they are?

Good luck.
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6

I know that you can get suse for free… :wink: It’s the additional software what is licensed to the hardware that will be too expensive :frowning:

Yes the problem still exists.

Any hints/tips to solve the problem are still welcome.

kr
jurgen