[Xastir] Mac: odd process problem

[Jason Winningham]

On Jul 2, 2007, at 9:06 PM, Chip G. wrote:

> I have no idea what some of that stuff means ... time to RTFM for ps.

USER       PID %CPU %MEM      VSZ    RSS  TT  STAT STARTED      TIME  
COMMAND
jdw        232   2.1  0.0    56044    476  p1  R    Fri06AM 103:52.88  
xastir
jdw        231   0.8  5.0   127264  52892  p1  R    Fri06AM  73:32.54  
xastir
jdw        233   0.0  0.0    56044    284  p1  S    Fri06AM   0:00.00  
xastir

vsz - virtual set size; this is virtual memory utilization in pages  
(units happen to be kb in os x)
rss - resident set size; how many pages of real memory (RAM) this  
process is using (again, units happen to be kb in os x)
tt - abbreviation for controlling tty; p1 = /dev/ttyp1
stat - status; r = runnable, s = sleeping


Here's a trick I use to remind myself what the headers are. I need  
reminders, because they're different on mac os, linux, and solaris,  
and I see all three frequently:

$ ps -whatever | head -1; ps -whatever | grep "what i'm looking for"


> 1. Why are three processes starting every time Xastir runs and what  
> are the other processes doing?

I dunno, but they are supposed to be there.  add different flags to  
ps and you can see the parent process id and see that they're all  
related.  in this example, pid 231 is the parent, 232 and 233 are its  
children.  pid 231 is the child of 230, which happens to be the copy  
of bash running in my xterm.

$ ps -o user,pid,ppid,time,command | grep -i xastir
USER   PID  PPID      TIME COMMAND
....
jdw    231   230  73:42.62 xastir
jdw    232   231 104:06.05 xastir
jdw    233   231   0:00.00 xastir

> 2. When the process locks up, how do I get it to quit since KILL  
> and KILLALL aren't working?

I think I've used kill -HUP aka kill -1; it's been a while, so I  
don't remember for sure.  kill with no flag is kill -TERM.  I  
generally try kill, kill -1, kill -9 in that order.  Sometimes it  
takes a few seconds for a process to die, especially if it needs to  
harvest children or has trapped signals so it can clean up and exit  
gracefully (hence the un-trapable kill -9, in case it hangs up doing  
that).

> 3. Why does the latest CVS builds on Xastir lockup after only a  
> couple of hours operating?

As easy as it is to forget, especially given the quality of xastir's  
CVS, the "latest" cvs is in fact bleeding edge development code.   
Check the docs (README.CVS maybe?) for information on how to check  
out the STABLE release to avoid these (rare) occurrences.

-Jason
kg4wsv