Bug 87638

Summary: ps shows processed as swap while no swap in use
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 Reporter: Christian Stelter <christian.stelter>
Component: kernelAssignee: Don Howard <dhoward>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 2.1CC: alexl, bluth, ivanfmartinez, jdbeyer, jzimmerman, rajiv
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i686   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2006-09-11 23:37:55 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Christian Stelter 2003-03-31 15:54:21 UTC
From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2) Gecko/20021202

Description of problem:
today we updated an AS to kernel kernel-smp-2.4.9-e.16 

after the update processes which are not swaped out are marked as in swap:

# ps axuw|grep squid
root      1540  0.0  0.0  3796 1124 ?        S    16:04   0:00 [squid]
web       1542 30.4  1.1 50852 46456 ?       S<   16:04  31:25 [squid]
root      1909  0.0  0.0  3804 1132 ?        S    16:05   0:00 [squid]
web       1911 27.9  1.0 46152 41736 ?       S<   16:05  28:52 [squid]
root     18331  0.0  0.0  1452  452 pts/1    S    17:48   0:00 grep squid

Mem:  3927700K av,  786776K used, 3140924K free,     364K shrd,  106484K buff
Swap: 1847464K av,       0K used, 1847464K free                  490196K cached

  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
 1911 web       13  -2 41752  40M  1320 S <  29.5  1.0  29:02 squid
 1542 web       13  -2 46472  45M  1320 S <  27.9  1.1  31:37 squid

Uh? Because of this bug our server monitoring fails. :-(

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
procps-2.0.7-11

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. ps axuw (or ps -efa)


Actual Results:  # ps -efa|grep squid
root      1540     1  0 16:04 ?        00:00:00 [squid]
web       1542  1540 30 16:04 ?        00:32:14 [squid]
root      1909     1  0 16:05 ?        00:00:00 [squid]
web       1911  1909 27 16:05 ?        00:29:31 [squid]
root     18965 10824  0 17:51 pts/1    00:00:00 grep squid

Expected Results:  # ps -efa|grep squid
root     26493     1  0 05:23 ?        00:00:00 /server/www/squid/bin/squid -f /
web      26496 26493 26 05:23 ?        03:21:50 (squid) -f /server/www/squid/etc
root     26497     1  0 05:23 ?        00:00:00 /server/www/squid/bin/squid -f /
web      26499 26497 26 05:23 ?        03:15:30 (squid) -f
/server/www/squid/etcroot      8817  8705  0 17:51 pts/1    00:00:00 grep squid

Additional info:

Kernel-Update -> 2.4.9-e.16

Comment 1 Alexander Larsson 2003-04-01 12:47:53 UTC
The brackets are added when the file /proc/$pid/cmdline is empty. Is this
happening with the new kernel?


Comment 2 Christian Stelter 2003-04-01 13:55:59 UTC
After an restart (automatic, every night) the parent process has its cmdline
correctly. 

Only the child processes now have brackets (and empty cmdlines). On a system
with 2.4.9-e.3smp kernel the child have a cmdline.

--- 1. new kernel system (2.4.9-e.16smp):

web      27679 18.4  3.3 133828 132188 ?     R    05:21 114:23 [squid]
web      27680 19.5  2.5 99908 98388 ?       S    05:21 121:26 [squid]
root     27674  0.0  0.0  3800 1128 ?        S    05:21   0:00
/server/www/squid/bin/squid -f /server/www/squid/etc/squid1.conf
root     27676  0.0  0.0  3800 1128 ?        S    05:21   0:00
/server/www/squid/bin/squid -f /server/www/squid/etc/squid2.conf

# cat /proc/27679/cmdline
#

--- 2. old kernel system (2.4.9-e.3smp)
root     21666  0.0  0.0  3828 1108 ?        S    05:23   0:00
/server/www/squid/bin/squid -f /server/www/squid/etc/squid1.conf
root     21669  0.0  0.0  3828 1108 ?        S    05:23   0:00
/server/www/squid/bin/squid -f /server/www/squid/etc/squid2.conf
web      21670 17.5  6.4 134104 132396 ?     S    05:23 109:24 (squid) -f
/server/www/squid/etc/squid1.conf
web      21672 18.5  4.3 91008 89332 ?       S    05:23 115:57 (squid) -f
/server/www/squid/etc/squid2.conf


# cat /proc/21672/cmdline
(squid)-f/server/www/squid/etc/squid2.conf



Comment 3 Alexander Larsson 2003-04-02 09:55:21 UTC
I have no idea why this is happening, but it seems to be a kernel issue, so I'm
reassigning this to the kernel module.

Comment 4 Christian Stelter 2003-04-09 08:09:31 UTC
Any new insights?

The problem persists.

Comment 5 Nick (Gunnar) Bluth 2003-04-24 13:13:18 UTC
We experience the same problems since update to 2.4.9-e16enterprise. 
 
Since then, we also had kernel panics caused by process "ps" on 2 completely idle 
boxes (Easter monday and and midnight). 
 
Also, Patrol is heavily irritated.... 

Comment 6 Alexander Larsson 2003-04-24 15:50:20 UTC
*** Bug 89513 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7 Ivan Martinez 2003-04-29 23:01:50 UTC
I have the same problem on RedHat 9.
Kernel 2.4.20-9
I checked the /proc/pid/cmdline and it's empty in the case, the processes are
not swapped. 
(1.5G RAM) and sendmail processes are sending/receiving mail, and they appear
without cmdline.


Comment 8 Jean-David Beyer 2003-05-14 10:57:17 UTC
The same thing seems to be happening in Red Hat Linux 7.3.
When up2date upgraded the kernel from vmlinuz-2.4.18-26.7.xsmp to
vmlinuz-2.4.18-27.7.xsmp, programs like sendmail and IBM's DB2 UDB V6.1 stopped
recording the correct process names in ps and top commands.

Comment 9 Jean-David Beyer 2003-05-14 13:06:53 UTC
Here are some results (output of "top" command) using each of two kernels. The
older kernel gives the desired output, the new one does not:

vmlinuz-2.4.18-26.7.xsmp kernel:

 1126 root      15   0  1416 1416  1000 S     0.0  0.2   0:00 sendmail:
accepting connections     
 1132 smmsp     17   0  1312 1312   976 S     0.0  0.2   0:00 sendmail: Queue
runner@00:02:00 for /var/spool/
 1371 root      17   0  8700 8700  8580 S     0.0  1.6   0:00 db2wdog          
                  
 1372 db2inst1  15   0 15104  14M 14964 S     0.0  2.9   0:00 db2sysc          
                  
 1373 root      15   0 11084  10M 11004 S     0.0  2.1   0:00 db2gds           
                  
 1374 db2inst1  17   0 11212  10M 11068 S     0.0  2.1   0:00 db2ipccm         
                  
 1375 db2inst1  18   0 15072  14M 14936 S     0.0  2.9   0:00 db2tcpcm         
                  
 1376 db2inst1  16   0 11144  10M 11024 S     0.0  2.1   0:00 db2resyn         
                  
 1377 db2inst1  16   0 11140  10M 11008 S     0.0  2.1   0:00 db2srvlst        
           


vmlinuz-2.4.18-27.7.xsmp kernel:

 1003 root      15   0  1416 1416  1000 S     0.0  0.2   0:00 sendmail
 1009 smmsp     17   0  1308 1308   976 S     0.0  0.2   0:00 sendmail
 1248 root      17   0  8704 8704  8580 S     0.0  1.6   0:00 db2sysc
 1249 db2inst1  15   0 15108  14M 14968 S     0.0  2.9   0:00 db2sysc
 1250 root      15   0 11088  10M 11012 S     0.0  2.1   0:00 db2sysc
 1251 db2inst1  18   0 11216  10M 11072 S     0.0  2.1   0:00 db2sysc
 1252 db2inst1  18   0 15080  14M 14944 S     0.0  2.9   0:00 db2sysc
 1253 db2inst1  16   0 11148  10M 11032 S     0.0  2.1   0:00 db2sysc
 1254 db2inst1  16   0 11144  10M 11012 S     0.0  2.1   0:00 db2sysc


Comment 10 Jim Zimmerman 2003-09-16 21:01:26 UTC
On my RedHat 7.2 machine, this problem was resolved when I upgraded my kernel to
2.4.20-20.7smp.

Comment 12 Don Howard 2006-09-11 23:37:55 UTC
This is a very old issue and is not critical or security-related.