rpc.pmfd is the Sun RPC server for serving the process monitor facility that is used by Sun Cluster software. This daemon initially starts when the system comes up.

rpc.pmfd must be started as superuser so commands that are queued to be monitored can be run as the user that submitted them.

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

truss(1)attributes(5)

Diagnostic messages are normally logged to the console.

To avoid collisions with other controlling processes, truss(1) does not allow tracing a process that it detects as being controlled by another process by way of the /proc interface. As rpc.pmfd uses the /proc interface to monitor proceses and their descendents, those processes cannot be traced or debugged.