I'm having two cat process without knowing why

Succulent of your garden · 2025-10-26 14:02:39

So I notice yesterday that my Arch machine is starting to launch two cat processes. It seems that is being generated by my user, but I don't know why. I was believing that it could be some scripts that I use in my system bar, but all of that is done with pipes using awk and or grep.

So I tried to check them with pstree but the tree doesn't show them, but I can see them through btop or checking it with ps aux | grep cat. Not sure if by rebooting the system the cat processes just disappear sometimes during bootings, but at least in some way it is always there, but as I can see I know that the id are 1429 and 1430. If went for example with cat /proc/1429/status and I can see that the process is in sleeping mode. Seems weird to be honest that there are two cat processes being launched by my user without knowing why they are there. The only main thing that I had done with this computer is mostly just updating the system.

Any help in finding what is triggering those cat processes will be useful ^^

Last edited by Succulent of your garden (2025-10-26 14:03:41)

seth · 2025-10-26 15:34:34

ls -l /proc/1429/fd

Maybe the opened files hint at what is being cat'ed here though most likely you'll have some stray "cat" somewhere that'll cat stdin
Does "ps fax" expose their parent?

Otherwise see https://man.archlinux.org/man/proc_pid_stat.5 - the 4th field in /proc/1429/stat is the PPID

Succulent of your garden · 2025-10-26 16:10:40

The ls -l /proc/1429/fd show this:

0 -> pipe:[16752]
1 -> /dev/tty1
2 -> ~/.dwm.log

I was thinking it could be my dwm.log that checked my .xinitrc but it doesn't use cat. Here is the part that send dwm logs:

while true; do
   STIME=$(date +%s)
   dwm 2> ~/.dwm.log
   ret=$?
   [ $ret = 0 -o $ret = 15 ] && exit
   (( $(date +%s) - $STIME < 30 )) && dwm # dwm crashes within 30s
   # alternatively
   sleep 5 # for rate control
done

But I checked for both cat the PPID it is the PID 1426. I checked what is the PID 1426 with ps aux | grep 1426, Wanna guess what it is ?

1426  0.4  0.4 34562748 283524 ?     Sl   08:28   1:10 /opt/vivaldi/vivaldi-bin --ozone-platform=x11

Yep, it's vivaldi LoL . What do you think about it ? do you think is normal that the browser uses two cats ? I don't think vivalidi is getting sentient and want two meows in life.

Btw I know that the cat is for concatenate

Last edited by Succulent of your garden (2025-10-26 16:10:59)

seth · 2025-10-26 16:24:49

Yup, looks like it's collecting logs (from the various electron processes) - your ~/.dwm.log should™ contain whatever comes out of that pipe (IO are /dev/null here because of how I start the process)

Succulent of your garden · 2025-10-26 16:46:21

Yes it does log vivaldi logs, but not much different that the other debugging post of vivaldi that I'm going to keep checking again soon, because now I have free time during the week ^^.

Do you think vivaldi is electon based in some sense ? I mean a quick search it does says that vivaldi is not based on that. But it seems you think that it does uses electron components.

seth · 2025-10-26 16:49:44

s/electron/chromium|blink/g

Succulent of your garden · 2025-10-26 23:47:59

Okey I get it. Thanks for the substitution ^^ , I guess in this case whatever poison are you going to take, it all goes to blink engine.

So in the end is just pick your Poisson, it's going to be made with gecko or blink

Last edited by Succulent of your garden (2025-10-26 23:48:29)

seth · 2025-10-27 08:30:44

So in the end is just pick your Poisson, it's going to be made with gecko or blink

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladybird_(web_browser)

cryptearth · 2025-10-27 09:53:11

"two cats just sleeping"
don't get what could be wrong with that *meow

kermit63 · 2025-10-27 11:23:22

At about the same time this thread was initially posted, there was another thread complaining about "weird mouse behavior".
Wonder what would happen if we merge the two?

Last edited by kermit63 (2025-10-27 11:26:57)

Succulent of your garden · 2025-10-27 12:24:27

seth wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladybird_(web_browser)

I knew it, but I know it's not ready yet. Have you ever tried that ? I mean the wiki said that the first mvp is going to be in 2028. Hope that thing does stay, probably it's going to kill firefox in the process, or maybe not, honestly it's going to depend how much money google is going to give to firefox LoL.

cryptearth wrote:

"two cats just sleeping"
don't get what could be wrong with that *meow
Offline

Probably nothing, I mean npcs are going to love it in the internet I guess

kermit63 wrote:

At about the same time this thread was initially posted, there was another thread complaining about "weird mouse behavior".
Wonder what would happen if we merge the two? smile

The cat processes would have something for eat and start working again, and therefore they will reproduce and create more cat processes until we get a OOM[eow] error and a meow panic after booting again the system instead of a kernel panic. Then just throw all your computers out from a home window, meow backdoor will be placed in bios/uefi in your mobo and home router. Trust me bruh I'm a expert

Last edited by Succulent of your garden (2025-10-27 12:26:47)

seth · 2025-10-27 13:16:34

"Mouse tartare"
There're some packages in the AUR but the "nightly" is not from upstream and I'm not eager to build a browser just to see how far it's away from alpha-status
Just pointing out that there's probably gonna be a third engine again.

Succulent of your garden · 2025-10-27 17:48:43

seth wrote:

Just pointing out that there's probably gonna be a third engine again.

2-uEVf2qvThArArpfR-HO6iZKZRHrENwtflTCZhPrfo.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=beccbe6c7078ebca7c05edad93482a4923108de1
If it doesn't going to make me suffer more as a full stack dev, then maybe could be nice

cryptearth · 2025-10-27 19:19:45

"OutOfMeowError" huh? gonna have to implement that somehow

Succulent of your garden · 2025-10-27 19:34:59

cryptearth wrote:

"OutOfMeowError" huh? gonna have to implement that somehow

You will need meowram which could be more expensive than normal ram I guess.

Arch Linux

#1 2025-10-26 14:02:39

I'm having two cat process without knowing why

#2 2025-10-26 15:34:34

Re: I'm having two cat process without knowing why

#3 2025-10-26 16:10:40

Re: I'm having two cat process without knowing why

#4 2025-10-26 16:24:49

Re: I'm having two cat process without knowing why

#5 2025-10-26 16:46:21

Re: I'm having two cat process without knowing why

#6 2025-10-26 16:49:44

Re: I'm having two cat process without knowing why

#7 2025-10-26 23:47:59

Re: I'm having two cat process without knowing why

#8 2025-10-27 08:30:44

Re: I'm having two cat process without knowing why

#9 2025-10-27 09:53:11

Re: I'm having two cat process without knowing why

#10 2025-10-27 11:23:22

Re: I'm having two cat process without knowing why

#11 2025-10-27 12:24:27

Re: I'm having two cat process without knowing why

#12 2025-10-27 13:16:34

Re: I'm having two cat process without knowing why

#13 2025-10-27 17:48:43

Re: I'm having two cat process without knowing why

#14 2025-10-27 19:19:45

Re: I'm having two cat process without knowing why

#15 2025-10-27 19:34:59

Re: I'm having two cat process without knowing why

Board footer