MySQL 4.0.21 working fine but why 180+ child process?

[Azhar Hussain]

Hi,

I upgrade MySQL 3.23.56 to 4.0.21 (OS=RedHat 9) successfully. But, I Observed abnormal behavior of MySQL (or may be I am wrong and this is because of features upgrade). Thing is, in MySQL 3.23.56 when I start service, only one process (or hardly 5 child) exist (checked thru command “ps -A | grep mysql*” ) but when I upgraded to MySQL 4.0.21. Above command shows me 180+ mysqld child processes. Is this is a correct behavior (any new change in mysql) or any problem. Logs (/var/log/mysql.log) shows me successful start/stop. MySQL working fine but why 180+ child process?

-------------------------------------------------
/etc/my.cnf content is given below:

[mysqld]
thread_stack=128K
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
port=6306
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
max_connections=500
wait_timeout=28800

[mysql.server]
user=mysql
basedir=/var/lib

[safe_mysqld]
err-log=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
-----------------------------------------------------

shell# ps -A | grep mysql*

>> output is

6745 ? 00:00:00 mysqld_safe
6779 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
6780 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
6781 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
6782 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
6783 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
6784 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
6785 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
6786 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
6787 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
6788 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
6824 ? 00:00:33 mysqld
7014 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
7015 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
7016 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
……………………………...
……………………………...
……………………………...
……………………………...
……………………………...
……………………………...
7795 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
7796 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
9447 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
9482 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
10078 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
10123 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
11127 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
11133 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
11484 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
11943 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
13463 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
13883 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
13927 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
14285 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
14294 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
14450 ? 00:00:01 mysqld
14452 ? 00:00:04 mysqld
15463 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
15465 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
15478 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
15489 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
15509 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
15775 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
15800 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
16023 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
16024 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
16300 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
16453 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
16455 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
16995 ? 00:01:35 mysqld
18074 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
18519 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
18547 ? 00:00:00 mysqld
18725 ? 00:00:08 mysqld

Skipping lines here, but total 181 lines.

Why so many child process?

Azhar H.