Excessive number of mysqld PID in linux

[Alessandro Furlan]

Sorry in advance for my english...
I have installed MySql 4.1.7 on a Linux RedHat9 machine .
Executing the command "top", i've noticed there are 10 (!) PID of mysqld.
"top" screenshot is here:
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CPU states: 10.7% user 3.5% system 0.0% nice 0.0% iowait 85.7% idle
Mem: 384580k av, 243552k used, 141028k free, 0k shrd, 11472k buff
204076k actv, 3540k in_d, 19204k in_c
Swap: 816092k av, 0k used, 816092k free 118432k cached

PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME CPU COMMAND
1877 root 22 0 69484 67M 32420 S 3.4 18.0 0:56 0 java
1900 root 25 0 26756 26M 9476 S 0.0 6.9 0:29 0 java
2102 gdm 15 0 18776 18M 6872 S 0.0 4.8 0:02 0 gdmgreeter
1817 mysql 15 0 14092 13M 2340 S 0.0 3.6 0:00 0 mysqld
1869 mysql 15 0 14092 13M 2340 S 0.0 3.6 0:00 0 mysqld
1870 mysql 20 0 14092 13M 2340 S 0.0 3.6 0:00 0 mysqld
1871 mysql 15 0 14092 13M 2340 S 0.0 3.6 0:00 0 mysqld
1872 mysql 15 0 14092 13M 2340 S 0.0 3.6 0:00 0 mysqld
1873 mysql 15 0 14092 13M 2340 S 0.0 3.6 0:00 0 mysqld
1881 mysql 15 0 14092 13M 2340 S 0.0 3.6 0:00 0 mysqld
1882 mysql 15 0 14092 13M 2340 S 0.0 3.6 0:00 0 mysqld
1883 mysql 15 0 14092 13M 2340 S 0.0 3.6 0:00 0 mysqld
1884 mysql 15 0 14092 13M 2340 S 0.0 3.6 0:00 0 mysqld
2459 mysql 15 0 14092 13M 2340 S 0.0 3.6 0:00 0 mysqld
2489 mysql 15 0 14092 13M 2340 S 0.0 3.6 0:00 0 mysqld
2490 mysql 15 0 14092 13M 2340 S 0.0 3.6 0:00 0 mysqld
2491 mysql 15 0 14092 13M 2340 S 0.0 3.6 0:00 0 mysqld
2492 mysql 15 0 14092 13M 2340 S 0.0 3.6 0:00 0 mysqld
1961 root 15 0 13524 8980 1916 S 0.0 2.3 0:02 0 X
1899 nobody 15 0 4356 4356 2168 S 0.0 1.1 0:00 0 httpd
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The only application that it uses Mysql, is a single instance of Apache Tomcat 5, (configured with a Database Connection Pool -DBCP).
All the PID's have the same size, and all grow equally!!The proble is the total RAM occupation (14*10=140MB!)
It's a normal behavior?
On a windows version of 4.1.7 Mysql, i've noticed only one mysql process (15 mb approx its size)

Thanks in advance for your support..!
Best regards
Alessandro Furlan - Monza (Italy)