Granted Patent B1

US 7,017,082 · App. 10/170,246 · Granted Mar 21, 2006

Assignee: Extreme Networks

Abstract

Claims (38)

1. A method comprising:

starting a process;

accumulating an amount of uptime for the process;

incrementing a crash count when the process crashes;

calculating a crash rate from the crash count per the amount of uptime; and

killing the process when the calculated crash rate exceeds a maximum crash rate.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising attempting to restart the process when the process crashes if the crash rate does not exceed the maximum crash rate.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising cleaning up internal process control data and notifying an administrator when the crash rate exceeds a maximum crash rate.

4. A method comprising:

starting a process;

setting a process timer;

polling the process;

incrementing a timeout count when the process fails to respond to polling before the process timer expires; and

killing the process when the timeout count exceeds a maximum number of timeouts.

5. The method of claim 4 , further comprising resetting the timeout count each time the process responds to polling.

6. The method of claim 4 , wherein polling the process and incrementing the timeout count when the process fails to respond to polling before the process timer expires comprises sending a message to the process and incrementing the timeout count when the process fails to reply to the sent message before the process timer expires.

7. The method of claim 6 , further comprising resetting the timeout count each time the process replies to the sent message.

8. A method comprising:

starting a process wherein the process comprises a plurality of threads;

setting a thread timer for each of the plurality of threads of the process;

waiting for each thread to provide an updated status;

incrementing a corresponding thread timeout count when any of the threads fails to provide an updated status before the corresponding thread timer expires; and

killing the process when any of the thread timeout counts exceeds a maximum number of timeouts.

9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising incrementing the timeout counts when the process fails to register before any of the thread timers expire.

10. The method of claim 8 , further comprising incrementing the timeout counts when the process fails to send a message before any of the thread timers expire.

11. The method of claim 8 , further comprising resetting the thread timeout count each time a corresponding thread provides an updated status.

12. An apparatus comprising:

a process monitor to monitor a behavior of a process;

a timer to measure an amount of uptime;

a counter to count the number of times the process crashes;

a calculator to measure a crash rate from the number of times the process crashes per the amount of uptime; and

a controller to kill the process when the calculated crash rate exceeds a predetermined maximum crash rate.

13. An article of manufacture comprising a machine accessible medium including content that when accessed by a machine causes the machine to:

start a process;

accumulate an amount of uptime for the process;

increment a crash count when the process crashes;

calculate a crash rate from the crash count per the amount of uptime; and

kill the process when the crash rate exceeds a maximum crash rate.

Assignments (9)

Continuity (1)