Hi all ,

I have been using Zabbix to monitor a number of my servers, recently I have started getting alarms from Zabbix that there is 'Too many processes' on one of them , (>350).

When I checked my server it looked like it had rather 54ish processes using this command :

So my questions are :
-What does the alarm mean ?
-How can I tell if i have a problem ?
-How can I fix the problem ?

That the server has more process running that the ceiling of the alarm settings.
Trust your monitoring tool. It will tell you. Its its job.
Frankly speaking if its only for a short duration that you have that much process i would not take is as a problem.
Raise the number of process within the zabbix monitor.

You could also build your own script that prints the output of ps aux to a file to see if those numbers and the once of zabbix match. Also have in mind that zabbix check once a minute (iirc the default value). You could just live with the message. Disable the check. Or if this server runs an webserver you might want to restrict the number of possible childs in the config.

Hi zhjim , Thanks for you answer above,
I however still would be almost in the same place , I would like to understand why is the alarm fired up , my server CPU consumption is very low , and when i googled a bit i found some opinions saying that there is not limitation on the processes number for Linux, I would like to understand why is it a negative thing, and whats happening on the server that makes this bad.
knowing that in this case the servers is running a Mysql DB server.

the number of processes are limited, you cannot have more than a few thousands (in general). But probably your zabbix is simply misconfigured, that's all.

Acctually i just saw that when i am using the command

I am getting only the processes started by Root.

When i use for example :

I get much more processes around 700 ... but have no idea how to understand if this is bad for the server

ps aux will give you all the processes. 7000 is a bit too much, but probably not.
You can try
and check the output. (this will print the commands executed together with the number of that processes

In addition to the above , When i use command

I see in the top that 1 is running and 700 are idling, which i suppose is good ..
Then i don't understand in which case the alam for 'too many processes' is at all useful

if you have too many processes (like several thousands) they will get no time (because the time slice will be too small). So your system will slow down.

Hi Pan64 ,

I also see that the CPU utilization is very low , so probably what you said doesn't apply to my case right ?

Normaly even idle process need some life time. And if they would all wake up at the same time, down goes performance. Might want to check why there are 700 idle processes. What spawns all those (assumed) childs? Whats their process name?

hi, dude, i am also using Zabbix for your environment, i am getting to many processes warning from Zabbix can tell me how to check in Linux server, when we get mail regarding too many processes what are the things we need to check and its command

What counts is the LWPs (light weight processes = threads), shown with
SysV options start with a dash. (I am less familiar with the BSD options like ps aux, not starting with a dash.)
-L is LWP
-H is hierarchy, you can easily see parent-child relationship
-f is full
-e or -A is all (not only own processes associated with a terminal)
Process limits apply to LWPs and per user. Shown with
(limit in csh/tcsh)
Yes there should be a process limit. Some Distros have none. RedHat/Centos had 1024 that was sometimes too low, now 4096. Set in /etc/security/limits.d/
Your 350 is certainly a threshold in Zabbix.

Hi friends

We are monitoring your server through Zabbix we don't administrator password, so we get alert mail like too many processes in the mail in the particular IP of the Linux server.

I am asking what are the things we need to check on the Linux side for the too many process mail
can you help me with and along with the command

what I actually I do for too many processes means
1.we look on to the top command
2.sar 5 5

other than this kindly tell what i need to do