Setting *_oomprotect to the enabled state will run protect on that service, which sometimes fails. The following output is left on the console when it appears to have failed. protect: option requires an argument -- p usage: protect [-i] command protect [-cdi] -g pgrp | -p pid This is displayed when pid is not specified in the -p option. In other words, it is failing to obtain the pid. Furthermore, they are probably trying to get the pid before the pid is ready to be retrieved.