excessive "init" forking

[Eric Fielding]

Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: excessive "init" forking
Reply-To: fielding at geology.tn.cornell.edu
Distribution: na
Organization: Department of Geological Sciences, Cornell University

In a recent article I (eric at geology.tn.cornell.edu) wrote:
>...deficiencies are being corrected by upgrades. The question I have for the net
>is about a software problem. It appears that "/etc/init" is constantly forking
>off copies of itself, at a rate of about 50-100 times a minute. Each process
>lasts only a short time but meanwhile uses several hundred K of memory. At
>any one time "ps -aux" shows 5-10 "/etc/init -a" processes running. It seems...

George Hartzell (hartzell at boulder.Colorado.EDU) figured out the problem. My
/etc/ttys file was set up wrong. It had the ttyp0-ttyp9 configured "on" when
they should have been "off". The "init" process kept trying to create "getty"s
to look at those pseudo-terminals. This was using up valuable memory on our
un-upgraded (so far) 8 MB DECstation and causing it to crawl. It is now running
fine. (Though we still plan to order more memory when DEC starts selling it
for Consortium prices or if they don't from someone else...)

Thanks to the other folks who sent suggestions, too!

				++Eric Fielding