problems with ps(1)

[Conor P. Cahill]

In article <269 at zeek.UUCP>, rick at zeek.UUCP (Rick Wilhelm) writes:
> $ ps 
> ps: unlink() failed
> ps: /etc/ps_data, Permission denied
> ps: Please notify your System Administrator
>    PID TTY      TIME COMMAND
>   6237 pts010   0:00 ksh
>   6825 pts010   0:10 ps
> $  
> 
> This problem happens sporadically, with no _apparent_ causes.
> Anyone have any ideas?  I RTFM but to no avail.

ps will try to re-make /etc/ps_data whenever /etc/passwd, /unix, /etc/group 
(and possibly other files that I can't remember) change.  In order to 
do this the program and /etc are usually setup as follows:

	-r-xr-sr-x   1 root     sys        21472 May 22 15:28 /bin/ps
	drwxrwxr-x  20 root     sys         3552 Nov  9 18:16 /etc

my *guess* would be that one of these is not correct and therefore the 
ps cannot rebuild /etc/ps_data.  However, at some point someone that does
have write access to /etc does run ps which therefore correctly re-builds
the /etc/ps_data file and from then on nobody has to rebuild it.

another possibility is that there is a race condition in the rebuilding
of the /etc/ps_data file by two simultaneous ps processes.

All in all, it just doesn't matter.  your ps still works correctly and
eventually the file will be rebuilt correctly, so you probably can ignore
the messages unless they are continuous.
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