Waiting on mutex ?

Folks, Sometimes all of the sudden (well, isn't it always the case ?!) I see a lot of user threads sitting and waiting on a mutex, which is a dbs_partn type. This always happens at the pinnacle of the business day. At this point the whole application (third party, I don't have access to the code) with around 500 live users grinds to hold, onstat -g rea grows significantly... At the same time I get the corresponding user processes in OS spinning... I dont quite know what causes what: process is sent spinning because of the wait, or a contention on the mutex occurs because a number of spinning processes are pounding the same resource... I am running 7.24 UC6 on Solaris 2.6. Is there any way I can tell what is going on ? What kind of mutex is the dbs_partn ? presumably a table or index ? Anything I can do to research further ? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, guys Ilya Bogorad North American Leisure Group Toronto Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.