Process Table Corrupt?

[Roland Schemers III]

Hello! We have a VAX 6000/310 running Ultrix 4.0 (rev 179), and
twice since we have installed it in Augest the process table has
become corrupt! A bunch of system processes were all of a sudden
owned by a student (different student in both cases)! Here is
the abbreviated output of ps:

USER       PID %CPU %MEM   SZ  RSS TT STAT  TIME COMMAND
schemers 27280 20.6  0.8  498  350 p3 R     0:00 ps -guax
jfhumphr 27066 12.8  0.1  107   52 14 R     0:09 /etc/syslog
jfhumphr 27286  1.5  0.1   31   16 14 S     0:00 sh /bin/machine
jfhumphr 26940  1.2  0.6  301  251 14 I     0:03 init
daemon   10800  0.8  0.1  123   60 ?  S     0:53 /etc/syslog
jfhumphr 27182  0.7  0.2  237   73 14 S     0:00 -csh (csh)
schemers 14603  0.6  0.3  187  143 p3 S     0:02 -ksh (ksh)
root         1  0.3  0.6  301  251 ?  S     5:38 init
jfhumphr 27137  0.3  0.0    6    3 14 S     0:00 /etc/update
jfhumphr 27254  0.2  0.1  143   41 14 I     0:00 - H tty50 (getty)
schemers 27014  0.2  0.8  500  356 p3 T     0:01 ps -guax
jfhumphr 27253  0.2  0.1  143   41 14 I     0:00 - H tty49 (getty)
jfhumphr 27251  0.2  0.1  143   41 14 I     0:00 - H tty47 (getty)
jfhumphr 27248  0.2  0.1  143   41 14 I     0:00 - H tty45 (getty)
root     10834  0.2  0.0    6    3 ?  I     1:09 /etc/update
jfhumphr 27252  0.2  0.1  143   41 14 I     0:00 - H tty48 (getty)
jfhumphr 27238  0.1  0.1  143   41 14 I     0:00 - H tty38 (getty)
jfhumphr 27140  0.0  0.1   39   17 14 S     0:00 /etc/cron
jfhumphr 27177  0.0  0.1  143   41 14 S     0:00 - H tty10 (getty)
jfhumphr 27174  0.0  0.1  143   41 14 S     0:00 - std.9600 console (getty)
jfhumphr 26838  0.0  0.2  237   73 14 I     0:00 -csh (csh)
root     10841  0.0  0.2  117   83 ?  I     0:05 /etc/inetd
jfhumphr 27055  0.0  0.1   54   28 14 I     0:00 /usr/etc/rwalld
root     10837  0.0  0.1   39   17 ?  S     0:02 /etc/cron

Its seems that for every process that was owned by this
student (jfhumphr), there was also one still owned by root.
There were 2 crons, 2 updates, about 30 or 50 gettys each.

Has anyone seen this problem before? Just checking before 
I call DEC.

Roland



-- 
Roland J. Schemers III                              Systems Programmer 
schemers at vela.acs.oakland.edu (Ultrix)              Oakland University 
schemers at argo.acs.oakland.edu (VMS)                 Rochester, MI 48309-4401
~Disclaimer::Disclaimer() { reboot(RB_HALT); }      (313)-370-4323