[CentOS] process accounting - track PIDs

Tue Feb 10 01:22:00 UTC 2009
nate <centos at linuxpowered.net>

Hello --

I've done some searching but haven't come up with much
yet, I was wondering if there was a way to track PID
creation and what command was assigned to a PID?

I am trying to track down a locking issue with NFS/NLM where
the client PID that initiates the unlock request is not
the same PID that initiates the lock request. Even with
running "ps auxww" in a "while true" loop I cannot seem
to capture the PID it comes/goes too fast. I can see the
PID right after the one specified, but not the one I
want.

I tried a couple things I found for the audit system:
auditctl -a entry,always -S fork -S vfork -S clone
auditctl -a entry,always -S brk -F 'a0=0'
auditctl -a task,always
auditctl -a exit,always

And none of them were able to detect the PID that was created.

Another way to approach this is perhaps NLM debugging
on the linux client side but I haven't had any luck
tracking down useful debugging info on the client side.

I saw one post mentioning a kernel patch is needed and it
may make it into RHEL 5.3, though this is 4.4, so maybe it
is not possible.

any ideas?

thanks

nate