Phantom Proc32?

Hi,
I’m just curious about something I found. I don’t know if it’s a problem or
not (might be normal), and I just wanted to see what others thought.

On one of the systems I was working with, there is a process called “sys”.
I was monitoring processes over time to see if there were any bad things
going on (memory leaks, fd leaks, etc). One of the things I did was “ps |
grep sys” to see what it’s memory usage and state were. Of course, this
also matches Fsys and a few other drivers, but the most curious was 2
“/boot/sys/Proc32” entries in the list. The second one had a priority of
21f, and was in the READY state.

Is this something normal or is something bad that I need to look into more?

TIA,
Ron

Ron Cococcia <ron.nospam@request.nospam.com> wrote:

Hi,
I’m just curious about something I found. I don’t know if it’s a problem or
not (might be normal), and I just wanted to see what others thought.

On one of the systems I was working with, there is a process called “sys”.
I was monitoring processes over time to see if there were any bad things
going on (memory leaks, fd leaks, etc). One of the things I did was “ps |
grep sys” to see what it’s memory usage and state were. Of course, this
also matches Fsys and a few other drivers, but the most curious was 2
“/boot/sys/Proc32” entries in the list. The second one had a priority of
21f, and was in the READY state.

If I do a “ps | grep sys” I don’t see any Proc32 entries. Especially
not any with a priority of 23.

If you use “sin” rather than ps, does it show two Proc32 entries?
If so, can you capture the output and post it?

Normally, I would expect one Proc32 entry, probably running at priority
30f, (possibly as low as 27f, if you told it to run at a low priority).

I would always expect it to show as READY, though, in the output from
something like sin or ps – the reason being is that sin/ps sends a
message to Proc32 asking it about the state of various things in the
system, when it looks at its own state, well, it is busy running, so
it is READY, so whenever you ask it to looks at its own state, its state
is always READY.

-David

QNX Training Services
http://www.qnx.com/support/training/
Please followup in this newsgroup if you have further questions.

“David Gibbs” <dagibbs@qnx.com> wrote in message
news:bf4kgm$9cn$1@nntp.qnx.com

Ron Cococcia <> ron.nospam@request.nospam.com> > wrote:
Hi,
I’m just curious about something I found. I don’t know if it’s a
problem or
not (might be normal), and I just wanted to see what others thought.

On one of the systems I was working with, there is a process called
“sys”.
I was monitoring processes over time to see if there were any bad things
going on (memory leaks, fd leaks, etc). One of the things I did was “ps
|
grep sys” to see what it’s memory usage and state were. Of course, this
also matches Fsys and a few other drivers, but the most curious was 2
“/boot/sys/Proc32” entries in the list. The second one had a priority
of
21f, and was in the READY state.

If I do a “ps | grep sys” I don’t see any Proc32 entries. Especially
not any with a priority of 23.

Sorry, didn’t mention that it doesn’t happen immediately. It takes a while
for it to exhibit this particular issue. I think the pid table is run over
at least once (goes to 32k, then starts to reuse pids).

If you use “sin” rather than ps, does it show two Proc32 entries?
If so, can you capture the output and post it?

I think I checked “sin” (I wasn’t paying much attention), but I don’t
believe I saw another entry. What is interesting is if I repeat the command
over and over, the pid of the 2nd Proc32 entry is different, as if it were
in place of the “ps” or “grep sys” commands (I believe it would be the
latter). If it happens again, I’ll take a look with “sin” and see what it
shows.

Normally, I would expect one Proc32 entry, probably running at priority
30f, (possibly as low as 27f, if you told it to run at a low priority).

I would always expect it to show as READY, though, in the output from
something like sin or ps – the reason being is that sin/ps sends a
message to Proc32 asking it about the state of various things in the
system, when it looks at its own state, well, it is busy running, so
it is READY, so whenever you ask it to looks at its own state, its state
is always READY.

-David

QNX Training Services
http://www.qnx.com/support/training/
Please followup in this newsgroup if you have further questions.