20040920: LDM 6.1.0 problem with pqact

Hi Harry,

> To: address@hidden
> From: Harry Edmon <address@hidden>
> Subject: LDM 6.1.0 problem with pqact
> Organization: University of Washington
> Keywords: 200409201711.i8KHB9nJ017667 LDM 6.1 file descriptors pqact

The above message contained the following:

> I put up ldm 6.1.0 on my Linux server.  After a day or two the load 
> level was over 26, and the machine was very slow.  I believe this is due 
> to the change in the number of open file descriptors in pqact.  This 
> resulted in a large number of processes running on my machine, most of 
> which are locally written perl scripts run by pqact.

And here I thought I was doing you a favor.  :-)

Perl scripts, eh?  Kinda slow.

> 1. Has anyone else seen this?
> 2. Are there some standards that are supposed me met by processes 
> started by pqact (like idle timeouts)?

In general, decoders should

    1.  Terminate if they haven't received any data in some time (e.g.,
        10 minutes).

    2.  Not cause problems if they terminate before all the data is in.

> 3. Is there a way to restrict the number of files pqact will open up 
> outside of changing the source?

You might try using the "-wait" option.  This will cause pqact(1) to
wait until decoder exits before proceding to the next configuration-file
entry or data-product.

Regards,
Steve Emmerson

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