Zombies on SunOS and orasrv

we were finally able to track down the cause of the problem and (for us) were able to do a workaround. In fact we were able to reproduce the problem with straight SQLPLUS. The problem (in fact confirmed with trace -p <pid of orasrv>) is that orasrv on our system which is SunOS 4.1.3_U1, is that orasrv is not handling death of child (which is obvious because of those zombies).

For us, we are running the application on the same machine as the server, so by NOT using the sqlplus incantation of sqlplus with the <userid>_at_T:<host>:<db> we were able to keep zombies from begin left about in the proc table.

Follow? I think if you continue to use the _at_T mechanism for logging into the database, orasrv will continue to leave zombies.

this session created a zombie:

sqlplus dbuser_at_T:myhost:mydb

SQL*Plus: Release 3.1.3.2.1 - Production on Fri Jul 15 12:23:18 1994

Copyright (c) Oracle Corporation 1979, 1992. All rights reserved.

Enter password:
Warning: Product user profile information not loaded! Error in disabling roles in product user profile.

Connected to:
ORACLE7 Server Release 7.0.16.4.0 - Production With the procedural and distributed options PL/SQL Release 2.0.18.1.0 - Production

SQL> quit
Disconnected from ORACLE7 Server Release 7.0.16.4.0 - Production With the procedural and distributed options PL/SQL Release 2.0.18.1.0 - Production

Now I have a defunct (zombie) process which orasrv didn't handle - the question is WHY? if I use sqlplus without connecting over the network to myself there is no problem.

Scott Hissam
Unisys Corporation
(304) 367-8273 Received on Fri Jul 15 1994 - 18:30:52 CEST