00130: A Unix Data Server is being repeatedly killed by the operating system

Title:

A Unix Data Server is being repeatedly killed by the operating system

Description:

Some Unix machines are configured to automatically kill a process after a specified period of inactivity. This feature, while useful for killing defunct processes, can get in the way if it kills the Data Server too. The operating system usually checks to see how long it’s been since a process did any network or terminal I/O. 

Resolution:

In the case of checking network I/O, the Data Server has a special command line parameter (-k) to accomodate this. When the -k switch is used on the Data Server’s invocation, it will cause some network activity to take place at a specified interval. This ‘fools’ the operating system into thinking that it’s never idle for long, and therefore won’t be killed. 

If the operating system determines a process should be killed because it hasn’t done any terminal I/O for a while, it will also kill the Data Server. As the Data Server runs as a process without a terminal associated with it, there is no way to prevent this from the Data Server’s standpoint. Instead, this has to be dealt with from the operating system level to prevent it from killing the Data Server.

Last Modified: 12/19/1997 Product: PRO/5 Data Server Operating System: Unix

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