Path: utzoo!censor!teecs!belkin
From: belkin@teecs.UUCP (Hershel Belkin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Phantom CPU gobbler?!
Message-ID: <960004@teecs.UUCP>
Date: 28 Jun 90 04:40:19 GMT
Organization: Litton Systems, Toronto ONT
Lines: 23

I have what appears to me to be a strange situation which occasionally
occurs on my system.  If anyone can shed some light on what may be
happenning, I'd appreciate some e-mail! ...

Every so often I fins a shell process (sh or ksh) which has somehow
become dis-associated with its logon session.  By this I mean that
the shell's PPID is "1", and the user is no longer logged on.

How or why that happenned is not really my concern now.  What does
puzzle me, is that when this happens, the shell process eats huge
gobs of CPU time!  Running monitor shows it using all available
cpu (system) at all times, so that there is no idle cpu time on
the system!  As well, monitor shows a large count of "Involuntary
context switches".  I can find no evidence of any disc (or other) I/O
associated with the process.  Can anyone explain what the process 
is doing???  (Killing it always helps :-)

-- 
+-----------------------------------------------+-------------------------+
| Hershel Belkin               hp9000/825(HP-UX)|      UUCP: teecs!belkin |
| Test Equipment Engineering Computing Services |     Phone: 416 246-2647 |
| Litton Systems Canada Limited       (Toronto) |       FAX: 416 246-5233 |
+-----------------------------------------------+-------------------------+