orphaned netscape processes

From: Kevin Reardon <kreardon_at_cerere.na.astro.it>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 22:30:44 +0200

Dear OSF Managers,

     I have noticed that users who connect to our AlphaServer 2100A 4/266
with a VXT2000 X-terminal sometimes end up leaving "orphaned" Netscape
processes running after they have logged out (see 'ps' output below). This
doesn't happen very often (once every week or so from 15+ VXT users
connecting every day) and wouldn't be so much of a problem, but these
Netscape processes begin to eat up an entire CPU!

     Once you've noticed them, they can easily be killed by root, but not
by the user who owns them (as their PPID is now 1). I have auto-renicing
enabled, so they just sit in the background and only chew up CPU time when
no other interavtive processes are running. But it could result in reduced
performance for other long batch jobs we run. I do not think it is directly
related to the VXT terminal crashing either, and I don't see anything in
any of the system logs. Has anyone else has seen this and if there is a way
to avoid such "rogue" processes?

thanks,
kevin reardon

Output from ps -ef | grep user
user 1065 2497 0.0 - ?? 0:00.00 <defunct>
user 2179 1 99.0 13:47:32 ?? 06:51:01 netscape
user 2497 1 0.0 13:19:19 ?? 0:03.49 netscape

Output from ps Awvg | grep netscape
 2179 ?? R N 06:52:13 0 0 15.3M 7.8M 99.0 1.5 netscape
 2497 ?? IW 0:03.49 29812 0 15.3M 0K 0.0 0.0 netscape

Output from top
  PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME CPU COMMAND
 2179 user 60 4 16M 8208K run 411:47 98.00% netscape

Output from last -n 3 user
user ttyqd vxtna.na.astro.i Thu Apr 03 13:52 - 14:08 (00:15)
user ttyqd vxtna.na.astro.i Thu Apr 03 13:44 - 13:52 (00:07)
user ttyr9 vxtna.na.astro.i Thu Apr 03 12:59 - 13:44 (00:45)
Received on Thu Apr 03 1997 - 22:51:18 NZST

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