[K12OSN] reaper: a sane way of removing abandoned processes

[Rita Gibson]

> >Do you mean in place of the "purge-user" script that you integrated with
> >KDM and GDM?  I find purge-user to work fantastic!  Since it works
> >immediatley instead of once an hour it allows my users to log off and
kill
> >a hanging process such as Mozilla and then log back in and be able to use
> >it again.  OpenOffice can occasionally be a culprit.  I have had no
issues
> >since implementing "purge-user" and it has been a sanity saver for me.
At
> >the end of each day there are no users and no processes left hanging.
I'd
> >hate to see that fall by the wayside in favor of a once per hour cron
> >job....that won't allow my users to get right back to work on the
> >offending program without my intervention.  Am I right?
>
> The "purge-user" script will remain, but it will remain "OFF" by default.
> Since the "reaper" script only kills apps that have been disconnected
> from the DISPLAY, I believe it will be reasonable to turn that on by
> default.
>
> So "purge-users" will remain for those who want stray apps cleared
> immediately or for those who want to make sure that users only log
> in once. "reaper" will be there to make sure things don't slowly
> get out of hand over a long period of time.
>

> >>
> >>Stefan ran across a utility named "reaper" that looks for processes that
> >>have been disconnected from their X display and removes them.  I ported
> >>it to K12LTSP.
> >>
> >>This looks like a much more sane way of dealing with abandoned processes
> >>than I have included in K12LTSP 3.0.2/3.1.0pre.
> >>
> >>Please give this a spin if you are having problems with abandoned
> >>processes.
> >>
> >>
> >> ftp://k12linux.mesd.k12.or.us/pub/K12LTSP/testing/RPMS/
> >>
> >>These two packages are required:
> >>
> >> perl-X11-Protocol-0.04-4fs.k12ltsp.1.3.1.noarch.rpm
> >> reaper-1.6-1fs.k12ltsp.1.3.1.noarch.rpm
> >>
> >>This one is optional, it will automatically run the reaper script once
> >>an hour:
> >>
> >> reaper-cron-1.6-1fs.k12ltsp.1.3.1.noarch.rpm
> >>

Hello everyone:

This was in my "to-do" folder and I am just now getting around to trying to
get reaper working. I visited the folder referenced in this email, but did
not find the packages. I am wondering if most everyone else has this
working, where it is now located, so I can get this out of my to-do folder
and put it on my "done" list.

TIA,

Rita Gibson
RMSEL

P.S. We had installed a new server in our lab and I had neglected to change
purge-users from off to on, I had forgotten where it lived and when I went
searching for its location and information, I ran across this post in my
to-do folder. I couldn't figure out why the lab teacher was having to kill
so many processes during lab classes. DUH! Where do we or can we document
these kind of "tweaks" that evolve through this list? For example, I
remember when Calvin set up VeryNice on our servers, it made a big
difference in performance as did this purge-user script, and also prelinking
some of the applications that are used frequently on our network
(StarOffice).