Many 'yum' processes running constantly

Question

I am getting this output when I run top and trying to work out if it's problematic and why it would be doing this in the first place, all the 'yum' instances seem to always be there:

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND                       
 4865 root      19   4 70888 6128 2784 S  0.4  0.1   0:36.11 httpd                         
12257 root      22   4 43368 7140 2128 S  0.3  0.1   0:00.08 leechprotect                  
 5833 root      15   0  174m  17m 5772 S  0.1  0.3  11:32.44 yum                           
32329 root      18   0  174m  17m 5776 S  0.1  0.3  58:07.24 yum                           
  526 root      10  -5     0    0    0 D  0.1  0.0 232:18.20 kjournald                     
  724 root      18   0  174m  17m 5772 S  0.1  0.3  68:41.55 yum                           
  806 root      18   0  174m  17m 5772 S  0.1  0.3  56:33.33 yum                           
 4285 root      18   0  174m  17m 5776 S  0.1  0.3  51:03.07 yum                           
 4975 root      18   0  174m  17m 5776 S  0.1  0.3  51:51.25 yum                           
 4999 root      18   0  174m  17m 5772 S  0.1  0.3  28:13.26 yum                           
 6271 root      18   0  174m  17m 5772 S  0.1  0.3  55:34.77 yum                           
 6317 root      18   0  174m  17m 5772 S  0.1  0.3  23:25.34 yum                           
 7915 root      18   0  174m  17m 5772 S  0.1  0.3  27:35.54 yum                           
 8557 root      18   0  174m  17m 5776 S  0.1  0.3  75:57.69 yum                           
 8945 root      18   0  174m  17m 5776 S  0.1  0.3  33:20.97 yum                           
 9276 root      15   0  174m  17m 5776 S  0.1  0.3  32:25.79 yum                           
12384 root      18   0  174m  17m 5772 S  0.1  0.3  71:34.56 yum                           
12656 root      18   0  174m  17m 5776 S  0.1  0.3  26:47.81 yum                           
14834 root      18   0  174m  17m 5776 S  0.1  0.3  36:27.30 yum                           
15622 root      18   0  174m  17m 5776 S  0.1  0.3  36:15.49 yum                           
16367 root      18   0  174m  17m 5772 S  0.1  0.3  34:54.18 yum                           
16683 root      18   0  174m  17m 5772 S  0.1  0.3  26:22.34 yum                           
16893 root      18   0  174m  17m 5776 S  0.1  0.3  64:49.84 yum                           
17059 root      18   0  174m  17m 5776 S  0.1  0.3  43:45.62 yum                           
17774 root      18   0  174m  17m 5776 S  0.1  0.3  38:22.64 yum                           
18194 root      18   0  174m  17m 5772 S  0.1  0.3  34:08.88 yum                           
19172 root      18   0  174m  17m 5772 S  0.1  0.3  39:24.16 yum                           
19245 root      18   0  174m  17m 5776 S  0.1  0.3  63:18.26 yum                           
19486 root      18   0  174m  17m 5776 S  0.1  0.3  47:27.31 yum                           
19997 root      18   0  174m  17m 5776 S  0.1  0.3  76:19.65 yum                           
20279 root      18   0  174m  17m 5776 S  0.1  0.3  48:29.53 yum

That is problematic, as all but one of them will be locked. What are the arguments to yum? (`ps aux | grep [y]um` will tell you) — Dennis Kaarsemaker, Apr 17 '13 at 13:34
also try to get the PPID column or use the pstree command to see who is spawning those processes — golimar, Apr 17 '13 at 13:40

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 17 '13 at 14:36

What I have found from time to time is that the RPM database gets messed up. Try manually killing those hung yum processes and then

# mv /var/lib/rpm/__db.* /tmp
# rpm --rebuilddb

the second command will take a few moments to complete. Try and see if Yum works normally then.

Many 'yum' processes running constantly

1 Answers1