jps process unavailable as root user

Question

I have successfully installed Hadoop CDH5.2 on CentOS with JDK 1.7.0_80.

Processes start and are running successfully. However when I try to display the list of java processes as root using jps, it only returns the IDs and no description:

[root@elephant ~]# jps
11478 Jps
2871 -- process information unavailable
2972 -- process information unavailable
3146 -- process information unavailable
3611 -- process information unavailable
2796 -- process information unavailable
3445 -- process information unavailable

If I sudo as hdfs, I can see its processes description:

[root@elephant ~]# sudo -u hdfs jps
2871 SecondaryNameNode
11495 Jps
2972 DataNode
2796 NameNode

What could be causing root not to retrieve the process descriptions?

Answer 1

All these pid's are stored in /tmp directory. Processes started by individual users will be stored in a directory /tmp/hsperfdata_{username}. Seems like root user is unable to read that file. Stop all the processes, Clear the /tmp directory and start all the processes again.After this, try the jps command again.

Update:

If you are using openjdk, you will face this issue. For viewing all the hdfs related process, you have to use the command below

sudo -u hdfs jps

Similarly for yarn processes, you have to use the below command

sudo -u yarn jps

If you use oracle jdk, jps command from the root user will list all the processes, provided that JAVA_HOME is defined properly and $JAVA_HOME/bin is in your PATH.