proc.num[] returns wrong? number of processes

[luissma]

Hi,

I have the default Item 'Number of processes', proc.num[], and the default Trigger 'Too many processes on {HOSTNAME}', {HOSTNAMEroc.num[].last(0)}>300.

On several Red Hat boxes (RHEL AS 3 Update 2) with Zabbix 1.6.2 agent is returning "false" values like more than 800 processes but if I run a "ps -ef | wc -l" I get values of some 100 processes.

Anybody who has experienced same problem?

[caarts]

This has been covered recently in this post:

http://www.zabbix.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12456

[luissma]

Thanks but I think this is not the same problem.

Look:

# ps -ef | wc -l
137

and

# zabbix_agentd -t proc.num[]
proc.num[] [u|895]

Is there anything I am missing?

This has been covered recently in this post:

http://www.zabbix.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12456

[luissma]

I will answer myself...

I've been taking a look to the differences between proc.num[] and "ps" and, as per the test and results I got from the command line, it seems that proc.num[] is doing something like "ps -em | wc -l" counting all processes' threads in the total amount...

...but I insist, this only happens on my RHEL AS 3 systems, not on the RHEL AS 4 ones.

RHEL AS 3:

# zabbix_agentd -t proc.num[]
proc.num[] [u|1132]

# ps -e | wc -l
220

# ps -em | wc -l
1132



RHEL AS 4:

# zabbix_agentd -t proc.num[]
proc.num[] [u|217]

# ps -e | wc -l
219

# ps -em | wc -l
1714