Monitoring processes on the host level

You can monitor the following types of host-level processes through BMC PATROL for Oracle e-Business Suite:

orphan processes
zombie processes
running processes
stopped processes
sleeping processes

This topic contains the following information:

To monitor orphan processes

An orphan process occurs when a parent process dies and the child process acquires the operating system root process as its parent process. The orphan process attempts to continue its function and can use an increasing amount of system resources.

Two parameters in the PROCESS (OA_OS_PROC) application for the host enable you to monitor orphan processes:

Parameter	Type	Description
NumOrphanProcess	Graph	Shows the number of detected orphan processes. You can review the information specific to a point on the graph by double-clicking the annotated data point.
ListOrphanProcess	Report (text)	Shows list of detected orphan processes.

If an orphan process exists, PATROL automatically reports the orphan process. If there is only a single console connection, you are prompted to automatically kill the process. If there are multiple console connections, instructions for manually killing the process are displayed.

To monitor zombie processes

When a child process completes, but does not relinquish its slot in the process table, it becomes a zombie process. Since space in the process table is limited, if the system contains a significant number of zombie processes, system performance will decline.

Two parameters in the PROCESS (OA_OS_PROC) application for the host enable you to monitor orphan processes:

Parameter	Type	Description
NumZombieProcess	Graph	Shows the number of detected zombie processes. Annotated data points are available for more information on a specific time point.
ListZombieProcess	Report (text)	Shows list of detected zombie processes, including each zombie's parent process.

To monitor running, stopped, and sleeping processes

A parameter is included in the PROCESS (OA_OS_PROC) application for the host for monitoring processes in each of the more common activity statuses — running, stopped, and sleeping.

Parameter	Type	Description
NumRunningProcess	Graph	Shows the number of all running processes.
NumStoppedProcess	Graph	Shows the number of all stopped processes.
NumSleepingProcess	Graph	Shows the number of alll sleeping processes.

Annotated data points are available on all graphs for more information on a specific time point.

Where to go from here

Based on the supplied data, you can kill processes. See Terminating-processes-on-the-host-level.