Unidentifiable processes under Redhat Linux

Question

Upon issuing a ps ax command on a server I see the following processes that I can't identify. Googling them yields nothing useful. Does anybody know what these are or how I would track them down?

The system is a virtual machine running on VMware. I'm not sure what version as I don't control the infrastructure but I have asked if any VM snapshots or backups are taking place and they have said no.

System is Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.4 (Tikanga) Kernel is 2.6.18-164.el5

The system has been rebooted but these processes remain.

 7158 ?        S<     0:00 [WRITE_COW_THR0]
 7159 ?        S<     0:00 [ISSUE_WR_THR0]
 7160 ?        S<     0:00 [SNAP_R_THR0]
 7161 ?        S<     0:00 [WRITE_COW_THR1]
 7162 ?        S<     0:00 [ISSUE_WR_THR1]
 7163 ?        S<     0:00 [SNAP_R_THR1]
 7164 ?        S<     0:00 [WRITE_COW_THR2]
 7165 ?        S<     0:00 [ISSUE_WR_THR2]
 7166 ?        S<     0:00 [SNAP_R_THR2]
 7167 ?        S<     0:00 [WRITE_COW_THR3]
 7168 ?        S<     0:00 [ISSUE_WR_THR3]
 7169 ?        S<     0:00 [SNAP_R_THR3]

Any chance this server runs an Oracle 12c DB with Snap Clone running? — colealtdelete, Jan 07 '15 at 00:16
It runs databases (Progress), not Oracle. I don't believe the Progress databases do any snapshotting / cloning. If they do, it would be very unusual. — thatguy, Jan 07 '15 at 00:21
exe is an invalid symlink. When I list the /proc/7158 folder, I see the following: http://pastebin.com/DXH8BH4d — thatguy, Jan 07 '15 at 01:22

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 06 '15 at 21:07

3

These look like copy-on-write (COW) kernel threads possible related to a filesystem snapshotting solution. Do you have something like R1Soft Hot-Copy or LVM snapshots active? Any other backup software?

Please provide a pastebin of a full process listing.

answered Jan 06 '15 at 21:07

ewwhite

197,159
92
443
809

I agree. It does look like a kernel thread performing a snapshot but the company running the VMware host insists it is not. We are not running any snapshotting within the machine itself. I have put up the pastebin but have admittedly removed the database processes as they could identify the client. We run these databases on many servers and have never seen these processes anywhere else. http://pastebin.com/YdpXbak6 – thatguy Jan 06 '15 at 23:23
Please post the output of `df -h` and `lvdisplay`. – ewwhite Jan 06 '15 at 23:28
Here is a pastebin of the requested commands. http://pastebin.com/yVYrNYGy – thatguy Jan 06 '15 at 23:43

Unidentifiable processes under Redhat Linux

1 Answers1