What are the aio / ata / kmpathd / kjournald / ksoftirqd / migration / watchdog processes mean?

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

  • We are seeing several processes running with these names, between brackets:
root      3545  2387  0 Sep27 ?        00:00:00 [aio/4]
root      3546  2387  0 Sep27 ?        00:00:00 [aio/5]
[...]
root      4671  2387  0 Sep27 ?        00:00:00 [ata/69]
root      4672  2387  0 Sep27 ?        00:00:00 [ata/70]
[...]
root     11219  2387  0 Sep27 ?        00:00:00 [kmpathd/0]
root     11220  2387  0 Sep27 ?        00:00:00 [kmpathd/1]
root     11221  2387  0 Sep27 ?        00:00:00 [kmpathd/2]
[...]
root     11874  2387  0 Sep27 ?        00:02:18 [kjournald]
root     11880  2387  0 Sep27 ?        00:01:23 [kjournald]
[...]
root        81     1  0 Sep27 ?        00:00:00 [ksoftirqd/26]
root        82     1  0 Sep27 ?        00:00:00 [watchdog/26]
root        83     1  0 Sep27 ?        00:00:00 [migration/27]
root        84     1  0 Sep27 ?        00:00:00 [ksoftirqd/27]
root        85     1  0 Sep27 ?        00:00:00 [watchdog/27]
root        86     1  0 Sep27 ?        00:00:00 [migration/28]
  • What are these processes doing? Can I kill them?

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Subscriber exclusive content

A Red Hat subscription provides unlimited access to our knowledgebase, tools, and much more.

Current Customers and Partners

Log in for full access

Log In

New to Red Hat?

Learn more about Red Hat subscriptions

Using a Red Hat product through a public cloud?

How to access this content