RHEL 6.4 servers hanging when trying to login

Solution Unverified - Updated -

Issue

  • SSH and local logins through console are all hanging. SSH through one service account can be interrupted (ctrl-C) and it goes to it shell but all of its commands are just hanging except internal commands like; cd, pwd, echo, & >(redirections).
  • We see again the extremely high number of bash processes:
$ grep bash ps_aux.txt | wc -l
1763
  • Although there are not D-state processes, we do see some defunct processes:
$ grep defunct ps_aux.txt 
tsgops    2096  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan24   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops    3035  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan24   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops    8969  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan24   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   10081  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan24   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   11861  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   12721  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   12816  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   19073  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   19111  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   19766  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   19775  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   20168  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   20177  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [sh] <defunct>
tsgops   20283  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   20546  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   20555  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   20588  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   20615  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   20625  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   20639  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>
tsgops   20936  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan25   0:00 [sh] <defunct>
tsgops   32136  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Jan24   0:00 [capture_output] <defunct>

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4
    • seen on kernel 2.6.32-358.2.1.el6 (other versions likely affected)
  • automount / autofs
    • seen on autofs-5.0.5-88.el6 (other versions likely affected)

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