[Info-vax] Stupid question of the day, re: OpenVMS process names

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2020-03-13 14:44:39 +0000, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply said:

> In article <r4g5u3$8un$1 at dont-email.me>, Stephen Hoffman
> <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes:
> 
>> Pragmatically, process names are best considered nice labels for the 
>> SHOW SYSTEM display.
>> 
>> Process names are something I'd avoid for most other uses.
>> 
>> They're a less-than-entirely-robust means of target identification, 
>> when used for process management.
> 
> With many users and/or applications on a cluster, putting the username 
> and/or the application name (together with a number, to make it unique) 
> in the process name can make it easier to identify a process which is  
> causing a problem for others.

If your server and app management is largely unchanged from the 
previous millennium, sure.

As I stated, they're potentially nice labels for SHOW SYSTEM.

Where folks run afoul here is with trying to use that process name for 
something other than a handy label. Such as using it as a means to 
identify a target process. Or to prevent parallel execution of critical 
processes. Or to check the state of a complex app.

The lower-level means of process coordination and control are far more 
robust, though also more arcane to understand and implement.  And 
OpenVMS lacks in-built process management capabilities, as has been 
discussed. No, batch is not a good process scheduler. It's missing 
rather too much.


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