Application Software Errors

Another source of problems may be related to poorly programmed applications or errors on the part of inexperienced users. Problems such as program looping, page thrashing, and excessive I/O can be isolated to a process with the SHOW SYSTEM command (akin to the UNIX ps command) as shown, in part, as follows:

     $ show system     OpenVMS V7.1  on node BEAVER  22-SEP-2002 14:45:26.41  Uptime  18 05:02:35       Pid    Process Name    State  Pri      I/O       CPU       Page flts  Pages     20200081 SWAPPER         HIB     16        0   0 00:00:04.68         0      0     20200086 CONFIGURE       HIB     10       39   0 00:00:00.04       174    242     20200088 IPCACP          HIB     10        7   0 00:00:00.01        96    175     20200089 ERRFMT          HIB      7    11746   0 00:00:21.90       147    232     2020008A CACHE_SERVER    HIB     16      994   0 00:00:00.44        80    129     2020008B CLUSTER_SERVER  HIB      8      324   0 00:00:03.14       328    557     2020008C OPCOM           HIB      8     4605   0 00:00:05.90      1288    228     2020008D AUDIT_SERVER    HIB     10     1639   0 00:00:03.18       682   1030     2020008E JOB_CONTROL     HIB     10     2565   0 00:00:04.68       277    417     2020008F QUEUE_MANAGER   HIB      8    34875   0 00:02:42.98      1400   1802     20200090 SECURITY_SERVER HIB     10     1354   0 00:00:07.37      1915   1516     20200091 SMISERVER       HIB      9      147   0 00:00:00.42       666    725     20200092 NETACP          HIB     10    36980   0 00:00:06.91       216    436     20200093 EVL             HIB      6      237   0 00:00:00.21       510    482 N     20200094 REMACP          HIB      8      183   0 00:00:00.12       108     78     20200095 LATACP          HIB     14       63   0 00:00:23.92       326    296     20200096 LANACP          HIB     13       37   0 00:00:00.10       431    652     20200097 UCX$INET_ACP    HIB      8     2671   0 00:00:07.73       455    481     20200098 UCX$INET_ROUTED LEF      6       37   0 00:00:00.13       395    623 S     20200099 IUPOP3 Server   HIB      6     3859   0 00:00:08.91      7923   1359     202000A7 DECW$SERVER_0   HIB      6      546   0 00:00:01.73      3479   1073     202000A8 MSAFSSERVER0    COM      4      362   0 00:00:01.02      1530    172     202000A9 DECW$LOGINOUT   LEF      4      152   0 00:00:00.92      4068   2470     202000AA MSAP$RCVR0      HIB      6       37   0 00:00:00.12       962    718     20200D39 SYSTEM          CUR      4      206   0 00:00:00.55      1618    383 

Furthermore, details about a specific process are available using SHOW PROCESS/ ID=. Various levels of detail are available using additional qualifiers. The following example shows only basic information:

     $ show process/id=20200d39     22-SEP-2002 14:48:21.24   User: SYSTEM       Process ID:   20200D39                               Node: BEAVER       Process name: "SYSTEM"     Terminal:        TNA384:  (Host: 94.phoenix-12rhl6rt-az.dial-access.att.net Port: 1086 )     User Identifier:    [SYSTEM]     Base priority:      4     Default file spec:  SYS$COMMON:[SYSMGR]     Devices allocated:  BEAVER$TNA384: 

Thus, the use of SHOW SYSTEM and SHOW PROCESS gives the manager detailed information about any process running on the system. This information can be used to isolate software errors, to tune the particular process, or even to tune the system.