Strange process

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Feb 15), Kris Kennaway said:
> On Wed, Feb 15, 2006 at 01:42:04PM -0600, Dan Nelson wrote:
> > In the last episode (Feb 15), Ivan Kolosovskiy said:
> > > top:
> > > PID USERNAME  THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE  C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
> > > 38410 findfile    1  96    0     0K     0K START  0   0:00  0.00% grotty
> > > 
> > > ps:
> > > host$ ps -waux | grep grotty
> > > findfile 38410  0,0  0,0     0     0  p6  REJ  19:57     0:00,25 [grotty]
> > 
> > E in the STAT column means the process is trying to exit, but
> > can't. What does "ps lp 38410" print?  The MWCHAN column should say
> > where in the kernel the process is stuck.
> 
> I often see this too.  For example:
> 
>   PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    TIME   WCPU COMMAND
>  5357 kkenn         1  96    0     0K     0K START    0:00  0.35% xpdf
> 
> > ps -waux  | grep xpdf
> kkenn    5357  0.3  0.0     0     0  ??  RE   Sun08PM   0:00.20 [xpdf]
> 
> > ps lp 5357
>   UID   PID  PPID CPU PRI NI   VSZ   RSS MWCHAN STAT  TT       TIME COMMAND

That syntax should have worked...  Try a plain "px axl | grep xpdf"
instead.

I think top's START state corresponds to the ~200-line window of code
in kern_fork.c:fork1() between p_state=PRS_NEW and p_state=PRS_NORMAL,
but I'm not positive.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson at allantgroup.com