After installing a non-RAC (Real Application Clusters) 10g database, you notice an ocssd.bin process running.
ps -ef | grep ocssd.bin
oracle 11139 11056 0 14:02:14 pts/52 0:00 grep ocssd.bin
oracle 1824 1 0 Mar 12 ? 0:01 /oracle/64bit/10.1.0/bin/ocssd.bin
Solution
In a non-RAC environment, the ocssd.bin process is used for communication between a database instance and the ASM (Automatic Storage Management) instance. Even if you are not using ASM this process will be run out of the inittab:
more /etc/inittab | grep cssd
h1:3:respawn:/etc/init.d/init.cssd run >/dev/null 2>&1
This process does not consume many resources and can be ignored if you are not running RAC or ASM. If you decide that you want to use ASM in the future, it will be necessary for this process to be running.
Note:
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Its recommended to stop occsd.bin and remove it from inittab before applying a patch.