Process Management in RHEL 6

This project introduces some of the basic commands and utilities used to manage process .

Below I have mentioned the most i preferred to manage process.

• ps
• top
• renice
• kill 

1.PS

We can view the current running process with ps command. I will mention some basic ps useful command.

To see every process on the system using standard syntax:

• ps -e
• ps -ef
• ps -eF
• ps -ely

To see every process on the system using BSD Syntax:

• ps ax
• ps axu

To print a process tree:

• ps -ejH
• ps axjf

To get info about threads:

• ps -eLF
• ps axms

To get security info:

• ps -eo euser,ruser,suser,fuser,f,comm,label
• ps axZ
• ps -eM

To see every process running as root (real & effective ID) in user format:

• ps -U root -u root u

To see every process with a user-defined format:

• ps -eo pid,tid,class,rtprio,ni,pri,psr,pcpu,stat,wchan:14,comm
• ps axo stat,euid,ruid,tty,tpgid,sess,pgrp,ppid,pid,pcpu,comm
• ps -eopid,tt,user,fname,tmout,f,wchan

Print only the process IDs of syslogd:

• ps -C syslogd -o pid=

Print only the name of PID 42:

• ps -p 42 -o comm=

If there are a lot of processes on the system, you will probably want to page through or limit them using one of the filtering options, or the grep command.

Shows a page at a time:

• ps -ef | more

Returns only those lines containing the string "java"

• ps -ef | grep java

Returns only those lines containing the string "java", with a case-insensitive search.

• ps -ef | grep -i java

Returns only those lines containing the string "ora", omitting the grep line using "grep -v".

• ps -ef | grep java | grep -v grep

Returns only those lines containing the string "java", omitting the grep line using a regular expression.

• ps -ef | grep [j]ava

2.TOP

The top command is probably the most well know utility for displaying the most resource intensive processes on the system. For the most part you can get away with just running top and looking at the output.

• top

top - 17:14:40 up  6:49,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

Tasks: 104 total,   1 running, 103 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie

Cpu(s):  0.1%us,  0.1%sy,  0.0%ni, 99.6%id,  0.2%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st

Mem:   2050836k total,   459132k used,  1591704k free,    44956k buffers

Swap:  4128760k total,        0k used,  4128760k free,   163880k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR  S %CPU %MEM    TIME+     COMMAND           

 3414 root      20  0  15084  1088 824  R  2.0  0.1    0:00.01    top                 1   root      20  0  19396  1500 1192 S  0.0  0.1    0:00.71    init             

  2   root      20  0    0      0   0   S  0.0  0.0    0:00.00    kthreadd         

  3   root      RT  0    0      0   0   S  0.0  0.0    0:00.00    migration/0        

If you want to add or remove columns from the display, press the "f" key and toggle the letters in the "Current Fields" string. Capital letters mean the column is displayed. When you are satisfied press the return key and you will see the displayed columns will have changed.

Current Fields:  NAEHIOQTWKMbcdfgjplrsuvyzX  for window 1:Def
Toggle fields via field letter, type any other key to return 

* N: %MEM       = Memory usage (RES)
* A: PID        = Process Id
* E: USER       = User Name
* H: PR         = Priority
* I: NI         = Nice value
* O: VIRT       = Virtual Image (kb)
* Q: RES        = Resident size (kb)
* T: SHR        = Shared Mem size (kb)
* W: S          = Process Status
* K: %CPU       = CPU usage
* M: TIME+      = CPU Time, hundredths
  b: PPID       = Parent Process Pid
  c: RUSER      = Real user name
...

To alter the order of the columns displayed, press the "o" key and use the 

upper case and lower case letters corresponding to each column to move 

then left and right of the "Current Fields" string.

The sorting of the data can be altered using the following keys:

    M : Sort by %MEM column.
    N : Sort by PID column.
    P : Sort by %CPU column.
    T : Sort by TIME+ column.
    < : Moves the sort column left.
    > : Moves the sort column right.

The "r" and "k" keys are used to renice and kill sessions. 

These commands will be discussed below.

People often get a little confused about the memory information summary 
in the top part of the screen because the free memory listed seems very 
low to them. Linux uses free physical memory for the file system cache 
to improve I/O performance. If more memory is needed for processes, it 
is released from the file system cache. Linux only starts to use swap 
when all physical memory has been used. So the actual free memory on the
system is free+buffers+cached. If your concern is free memory, it is 
easier to use the free command to monitor it. The "Mem:" 

line gives the values presented by top, while the "-/+ buffers/cache:"

line gives the memory used by processes, ignoring the file system cache.

free

            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached

Mem:       2050836     459248    1591588          0      44988     163880
-/+ buffers/cache:     250380    1800456
Swap:      4128760          0    4128760
#

3.Renice

The renice command is used to alter the scheduling priority of one or more processes.

The "-h" flag displays the cut down usage notes.


renice -h


Usage:
 renice [-n] priority [-p|--pid] pid  [... pid]
 renice [-n] priority  -g|--pgrp pgrp [... pgrp]
 renice [-n] priority  -u|--user user [... user]
 renice  -h | --help
 renice  -v | --version

#


The priority can be changed to an absolute value or a value relative to 
the current setting. The following example changes the priority of the 
process with the PID of 8 to the value 10, then adds 1 to the priority.

renice 10 8


8: old priority 0, new priority 10

renice +1 8

8: old priority 10, new priority 11


With no flags set, it is assumed you are using "renice -n priority -p 
pid", so you are only targeting processes by the pid. The following are equivalent.

renice -n +1 -p 8 9 
renice +1 8 9


You can also target multiple processes based on their group or user


renice -n +1 -g 500
renice -n +1 -u oracle



You can also combine flags to target more processes.


Before you start altering the priorities you need to understand the 
inter-dependencies between processes. It is possible that by slowing 
down one process you will adversely affect the performance of other 
processes that depend on it.

The renice command can also be performed interactively in the top command, or from the "System Monitor" GUI.

4.kill


Not surprisingly, the kill command is used to kill 

processes. Assuming we have identified a process we want to kill and it 
has a process id of "1234", we may use one of the two common forms are 
show below.


kill 1234
kill -9 1234


The first example sends the "TERM" signal to the specified process, 
which is the preferred option. The second is more aggressive, sending 
the "KILL" signal. You should only use the "KILL" signal if your 
attempts to kill the process with the "TERM" signal have failed.


Always make sure to double check the process you are killing. Killing the wrong process can cause the system to crash.


The kill command can also be performed interactively in the top command, or from the "System Monitor" GUI.


You can kill multiple processes using a single command by combining kill with the ps and awk commands.


kill -9 `ps -ef | grep ora | awk '{print $2}'`