While using Tomcat 5.0.19 on Solaris 8 I occasionally see more than one Tomcat process running (as reported by ps -aef). In each case the "extra" process is a child of the original Tomcat process, exists for no more than a few seconds, seems to cause no trouble, and (troublingly?) leaves no trace in the log files. For example:
root 5425 1 2 Jun 30 ? 107:54 /usr/java/bin/java -Xmx512m -Dtomcat=1 -Djava.awt.headless=true -Djava.endorsed root 20981 5425 0 05:02:17 ? 0:00 /usr/java/bin/java -Xmx512m -Dtomcat=1 -Djava.awt.headless=true -Djava.endorsed Another instance captured using /usr/ucb/ps -auxwww, which makes it appear to be an identical process started by startup.sh / catalina.sh: root 5425 37.0 26.4274024264592 ? R Jun 30 146:49 /usr/java/bin/java -Xmx512m -Dtomcat=1 -Djava.awt.headless=true -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.19/common/endorsed -classpath /usr/java/lib/tools.jar:/usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.19/bin/bootstrap.jar:/ usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.19/bin/commons-logging-api.jar -Dcatalina.base=/usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.19 -Dcatalina.home=/usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.19 -Djava.io.tmpdir=/usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.19/temp org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap start root 23399 0.0 0.0274016 ? ? R 21:03:11 0:00 /usr/java/bin/java -Xmx512m -Dtomcat=1 -Djava.awt.headless=true -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.19/common/endorsed -classpath /usr/java/lib/tools.jar:/usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.19/bin/bootstrap.jar:/ usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.19/bin/commons-logging-api.jar -Dcatalina.base=/usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.19 -Dcatalina.home=/usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.19 -Djava.io.tmpdir=/usr/local/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.19/temp org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap start My basic question is under what circumstances does Tomcat create a child and/or fork? I have the JSP compiler "fork" setting set to false in /usr/local/tomcat/conf/web.xml, and in any case the JSP pages in use at the time hadn't changed for months (& therefore recompilation shouldn't even be a factor). I start Tomcat with $CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh. By the way, I rather accidentally stumbled across the "extra" processes while debugging Tomcat memory usage with a shell script that does a ps -aef every minute or so, and occasionally finds more than 1 process. Thanks in advance for any help/information/pointers. -- Jim
