Monitoring Programs
One of the toughest jobs of being a Linux system administrator is keeping track of what's running on the system — especially now, when graphical desktops take a handful of programs just to produce a single desktop. You always have lots of programs running on the system.
Fortunately, a few command line tools are available to help make life easier for you. This section covers a few of the basic tools you need to know how to use to manage programs on your Linux system.
Peeking at the processes
When a program runs on the system, it's referred to as a process. To examine these processes, you need to become familiar with the ps
command, the Swiss Army knife of utilities. It can produce lots of information about all the programs running on your system.
Unfortunately, with this robustness comes complexity — in the form of numerous parameters — making the ps
command probably one of the most difficult commands to master. Most system administrators...