DSXchange

Orphan and defunct processes are left by InfoSphere DataStage

Technote (troubleshooting)

Problem(Abstract)

We are regularly seeing orphan run processes that need to be manually cleaned up.
Resolving the problem

DataStage includes environment variables that can be used to manage processes that are not ending properly. The variables are:

DSForceTerminate: If this is set to 1 DataStage will force the termination of processes if they do not voluntarily terminate. If unset or has a value of zero then this behavior is disabled (default behavior).

DSWaitShutdown: If unset or less than 60 the timeout will be set to 60 seconds this has been the default for most customers. Setting a higher figure will result in job termination waiting for the specified number of seconds before the run process terminates or the stages are forcibly shutdown (depends on the above environment variable).

To use these variables you must add them as user-defined environment variables in Administrator for each project (they don't exist by default). Alternatively, you can set these variables the dsenv file but if you do that you need to restart the Engine.

You can use the following values:

DSForceTerminate=1
DSWaitShutdown=60

Note: For 7.5 or previous versions you must install patch JR34279 in order to use these variables. For 8.x versions you don't need any patch to use these variables