Assassin

Assassin is an Idle Process Management (IPM) software product that automatically performs predefined actions on processes that are idle, inactive or meet special conditions. Processes that are idle continue to use numerous resources and prevent other user processes from taking advantage of the VMS operating system’s ability to share limited resources. This can seriously impact system performance and place system security at risk. These idle processes can also block other users from accessing VMS or important software application programs by reserving limited license slots.

• What action Assassin will take when a process is idle.
• The level of activity that determines when a process is idle.
• Which processes get special treatment or are exempt.
• Where and how messages are sent when an action is performed.
• The messages that the user receives when an action is taken.
• Who on the systems staff is notified when Assassin takes an action.
• Which terminals are to be "locked" after the user logged in at the terminal has been idle for too much time.
• Which processes will be terminated because the user has been logged in to the system for too long a period of time.
• Which Screen Saver Image is displayed on an idle terminal.
• Different configurations for different nodes at different times of the day and days of the week. Assassin’s configuration component allows you to tailor Assassin to meet the special needs of your organization, system, day of week and time of day.

You can quickly and easily install Assassin on your system or in an OpenVMS cluster environment.

A default installation should take about five or ten minutes to complete. The Assassin Manual, which you can download along with the 30-day free demo, contains easy-to-use, complete instructions for installation.

Assassin’s monitoring component periodically gathers information about the processes on your system and decides if an action is required. If a process is consuming CPU time, generating I/Os or pagefaults above the thresholds you specify, then the process is perceived as being busy. Otherwise, it is considered idle. You can define how much resource consumption is required for a process to be considered as busy so that users are measured according to your definition of idle.

Once Assassin is configured as you desire, simply start Assassin’s monitor and forget about idle processes on your VMS system forever.