Can’t lock semaphore

[Jim]

Hi all,

CL 3.8.1 R4

I found this error message while reviewing the process log for a new site. I have not seen it before and don’t know what it means. I have followed all of the normal site clean-up procedures but it still persists.

semget: No such file or directory

03/11/2005 08:38:09

[msi :msi :ERR /0:neo_his_edi_ob] msiSectionLock: Can’t lock semaphore for thread neo_his_edi_ob: No such file or directory

03/11/2005 08:38:09

[msi :msi :ERR /0:neo_his_edi_ob] msiExportStats: Can’t lock data section for thread neo_his_edi_ob

Thank you

Jim

Topic

[Jeff Shields]

We’ve had this problem many times. We’ve found that the only way to get rid of it is to:

– Stop all processes and site daemons

– Copy the $HCISITEDIR/exec folder to something else (e.g. $HCISITEDIR/exec1)

– Delete the $HCISITEDIR/exec folder

– Copy $HCISITEDIR/exec1 back to $HCISITEDIR/exec

– Restart site daemons and processes

Don’t ask me why it works, I’ve no idea, it’s just something I tried one day. Maybe deleting the exec directory gets rid of the broken semaphore links?

Also, check your system semaphore parameters in /etc/system to make sure they are set to the recommended levels.

[Rick Brown]

I think this happens when someone starts something like the site deamons or an engine with some user other than ‘hci’.

You would need to shut the site down and logon as ‘root’ and setroot and site to your problem site.  Run hcimsiutil -R and remove the affected semaphore files from the site.

Once you have done that start things back up as ‘hci’.  It’s been a while but I think this is how I used to get rid of the problem.

[Jim]

Rick,

Worked like a charm 😀 , I will add this to my procedures for this particular problem.

Thanks again

Jim

[Bill Bertera]

We’ve had this alot, and I think it is because of long thread names. Threads shouldn’t be more than 15 characters, and processes 9. But after you change them, you need to delete the /stats directory, which is under /exec – probably why that fix works, but it just works temporarily.

Do you have long thread or process names?

[Jim]

Part of our Cloverleaf standards is that process names are not to exceed 9 characters and thread names are not to exceed 15 characters

Jim

[Anonymous]

The problem surfaces when someone starts the process with a user name other then hci.  This is because the semaphore and the shared memory segment cannot be accessed.  When you see this, you can do an ipcs -a and you will see the semaphore and shared memory segment information.

[Author]

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