Oracle creating defunct processes against job queue parent processes
401820Nov 23 2005 — edited Nov 25 2005OS: AIX 5.2
DB: Oracle9i Enterprise Edition Release 9.2.0.6.0 - 64bit
ERP: IFS
We have 6 job queues in oracle, numbered 0-5 as:
0-default
1-fast
2-system
3-report
4-background
5-edi
For the past week or two, we have on SOME days had a problem where we have run out of server processes, stopping new connections to the databases.
In our production DB we have 1250 (now changed to 2000) processes.
When we looked at the AIX processes there were 250 or so "defunct". In AIX you cannot always kill these off, restarting is the only solution.
However, over night we restarted the DBs (as we always do) but not the server. This morning no defunct processes at all.
Later in the morning, a few defuncts sprung up and as the morning has progressed, this has increased slightly.
We currently have 13.
They ALL relate to parents processes which are JOB QUEUE process (ORA_J00...)
oracle 41288 491302 8 00:00 <defunct> ora_j000_IFSL
oracle 99124 491302 7 00:00 <defunct> ora_j000_IFSL
oracle 182070 67152 9 00:00 <defunct> ora_j001_IFSL
oracle 362064 456194 9 00:00 <defunct> ora_j002_IFSL
oracle 408540 456194 7 00:00 <defunct> ora_j002_IFSL
oracle 413568 67152 10 00:00 <defunct> ora_j001_IFSL
oracle 464684 491302 7 00:00 <defunct> ora_j000_IFSL
oracle 485536 67152 12 00:00 <defunct> ora_j001_IFSL
oracle 490662 456194 7 00:00 <defunct> ora_j002_IFSL
oracle 494308 456194 7 00:00 <defunct> ora_j002_IFSL
We do not know why these are being created (I have checked a few background jobs but see nothing unusual in the time frames)
Is there anything we can do to investigate in detail the cause of the problem?
Thanks