extra processes under Win2000

[Mike Curwen]

Hi all,
Has anyone observed the following odd behaviours for iPlanet under Windows 2000? For completeness:
iAS 6.0 SP4
Windows 2000 Server SP2

Out of the box, the default install for iPlanet should produce a kxs, kas, kcs and kjs. Using the admin tool, we always kill the kcs.

But when iPlanet starts up, there are always TWO kjs processes. If I allow them to interact with the desktop, I can see that one of them is NEVER used (ie: it is not used in a round-robin fashion by kxs). Even if I kill the process that is being used, and very quickly try to request something... the browser will sit and spin until the kjs I just killed returns. That 'dummy' kjs is just NEVER used. But if we 'x' it from the desktop, it's dutifully restarted.

If I use the admin tool to add a new kjs process, so that the admin tool shows me two kjs processes, three will be started. Two are active, the third one is a dummy one. Same thing with trying to 'x' it, it gets restarted.

Does anyone know how to kill it dead? (or better yet, how to tell iPlanet to please only start the amount of kjs that I actually WANT?)


The second question is about kas. How many are there supposed to be?? I thought one. But ocassionaly (yup, it's not a sure thing)... there are two. So sometimes my processes are :
kxs
kas
kas
kjs
kjs

and other times:
kxs
kas
kjs
kjs

It's quite amusing, but only because this is not a production box!!. Solaris does not misbehave in this manner at all. Ever.

[faisal mahmood]

Are they threads or processes?
Faisal

[Gerry Giese]

If you look, one of the kjs windows will have the message 'ENGINE-READY: 10821', which refers to a port. When you check the admin tool (ksvradmin), you'll see that 10821 is in use by the CXS process. This is the process that runs the EJBs, so it's understandable that it needs a kjs (read: JVM) container to run the java in for local EJBs. I think the CXS just controls where to lookup and RMI the EJB requests to, but that's just a guess.
I've also noticed the extra kas process. It only seems to be actively using 1MB, so I never worried about. I think it might have something to do with clustering, but I'm not sure. You're right, the Solaris version seems to behave much better.
Hope this helps.

[Mike Curwen]

faisal - process.
Thanks Gerry, that is the answer. The CXS is actually a kjs process with a special flag. Stopping the cxs makes the 'extra' kjs disappear. You'd think they would fix that.

Here is a reply I got from our iPlanet contact on this topic:

It turns out that IAS SP4 ships with iAS preconfigured to autostart
a CXS (CORBA Executive Server) "RMI/IIOP bridge process." This
makes iAS read to go out of the box to play with RMI/IIOP sample
apps. like the Converter. Otherwise, the user would have to go
into the Admin Tool and add a CXS process. It turns out that CXS
is just a kjs process started with a flag, so you will see two
kjs processes: 1. The real VM where servlets/JSPs/EJBs run and
2. The CXS environment that takes the place of kxs as a middleman
for RMI/IIOP clients.
If you don't want to do RMI/IIOP, you should go into
the Admin Tool and delete the CXS and thus, rid yourself of the
other kjs task.