Killing an AppServer process

You might want to manually terminate an agent process when:

  • An agent process hangs
  • You determine from the available data that an agent process is a runaway process

The specific PID in the Agent pool summary on the Server Pool Control page allows you to access the page to kill the offending agent's process.

Note: OpenEdge Management references the specific PID and its associated date and time start details to be sure of a process' identity before it attempts to kill the process.

You can choose to kill the process in two ways:

  • Kill-Terminate the process immediately
  • Stop-Complete the process and then terminate it.

Because you want to manually terminate an agent process only under the two circumstances listed above, the command used when you kill the process is:

kill -9
Note: An agent (or server) process that has database locks can cause a database crash when you kill the process using the kill -9 command. Use the command, therefore, only as a last resort.

The description of the signal for the kill process is as follows:

  • Signal Name — SIGKILL
  • Signal Number — 9
  • Signal Description — Kill program
Note: OpenEdge Management references the specific PID and its associated date and time start details to be sure of a process' identity before it attempts to kill the process.

You can also kill a WebSpeed agent process. For details, see Killing a WebSpeed agent process.

To initiate a kill process:

  1. Click PID associated with the server process you want to terminate. The specific AppServer Agent PID page appeas.
    Note that the two sections on this page present relevant summary information about this AppServer agent and its current operational status. See Viewing broker process details for details about this data.
  2. Click Kill to terminate this process. (Alternatively, you can click Cancel at the top of the page to exit the page without terminating the process.)
    Note: You can also click Stop if you want the related process to complete before stopping.
  3. OpenEdge Management will prompt you once again to ensure that you want to terminate this process. Click OK.
    OpenEdge Management displays a final status page that identifies the status of your kill request. OpenEdge Management displays one of the following messages:
    • Process xxxxx has been terminated — This message indicates that the process was successfully killed. The PID number previously associated with this process is now available for the operating system to reassign.
    • Process xxxxx cannot be killed at this time — This message indicates that the process could not be killed. In very rare instances, it is possible that you will not be successful in an attempt to kill a process. You can retry the kill process procedure; however, it is possible that the process will persist for any number of unknown reasons.
    • Process xxxxx has been reused — OpenEdge Management has determined that the process PID number and associated time and date stamp do not match the values that the operating system has stored for this same process. Consequently, when you click Kill, the process cannot be destroyed.