I am a newbie to Informix. Does anyone know what determine the number
of oninit processes get initiated? We had a situation that we had
>100 oninit processes when we did 'ps -ef' and after we bounced the
engine, it dropped back down to normal (~15 oninit). Does anyone know
which parameter control the # of oninit processes? We are using
9.30.FC6 running on Solaris 2.8.

TIA,
Ray

They are from a variety of things:

- CPU VP's
- AIO VP's
- TLI VP's
- LIO VP's
- PIO VP's
- Misc. VP's

You can do on onstat -g glo to see which type of VP is mapped to a Unix pid.


"Ray Walsh" <raywsl@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:15aa6f7d.0404090611.ecf9044@posting.google.co m...
> I am a newbie to Informix. Does anyone know what determine the number
> of oninit processes get initiated? We had a situation that we had
> >100 oninit processes when we did 'ps -ef' and after we bounced the
> engine, it dropped back down to normal (~15 oninit). Does anyone know
> which parameter control the # of oninit processes? We are using
> 9.30.FC6 running on Solaris 2.8.
>
> TIA,
> Ray

"Ray Walsh" <raywsl@hotmail.com> wrote ...
> I am a newbie to Informix. Does anyone know what determine the number
> of oninit processes get initiated? We had a situation that we had
> >100 oninit processes when we did 'ps -ef' and after we bounced the
> engine, it dropped back down to normal (~15 oninit). Does anyone know
> which parameter control the # of oninit processes? We are using
> 9.30.FC6 running on Solaris 2.8.

What you are saying occurred doesn't make sense. Once the engine has
initialised, it does not add any more processes. As Jay pointed out, the
number of processes initialised depends on a handful of config parameters.

There is only one way that another process can be added - manual
intervention.

Someone with informix ID (either user id or group id) can run

onmode -p N TYP

where N is + or - a number, TYP is a CPUVP class (type of oninit process).
Make sure nobody is doing this. It's invariably a mistake in the hands of
newbies. In fact, if it has to be done at all, you've probably not setup
your config properly. There are some high-powered exceptions to this rule,
but you really need to know why.

To prevent this happening, severely restrict the informix and root
passwords. Also, make sure no other user is in the informix group. Very
Naughty. The informix account should be the only account in the informix
group. And informix should not be in any other groups, either.

By the way, a significant number of oninit processes is not a bad thing. It
all depends on the config, and the config is setup to suit the machine,
users and workload.

To get an idea of the legitimate processes at startup, run

onstat -g sch

The top section lists all the processes. When a new process turns up on the
list, start investigating or ask here.