Monitor system processes using commands like `ps`

[jbeadling]

Summary

Learn how to monitor system processes and gain insights into your system's operation using the ps command. Process management is crucial for system administration, debugging, and performance tuning.

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Description

• Objective: Become proficient in using the ps command to monitor, analyze, and manage system processes.

• Scope:

  • Introduction to process management
  • Understanding the ps command
  • Interpreting ps output
  • Practical use cases and best practices

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Learning Tasks

1. Introduction to Process Management:

   • Understand what a process is and why monitoring processes is essential.

2. Understanding the ps Command:

   • Learn about the ps command, syntax, and options for displaying process information.

3. Interpreting ps Output:

   • Understand how to read and interpret the output of the ps command for insights into running processes.

4. Practical Use-cases and Best Practices:

   • Explore scenarios where the ps command can be handy and learn best practices for its usage.

5. Hands-on Practice:

   • Exercise 1: Use ps to list all processes running for the current user.
   • Exercise 2: Use ps with flags like -e, -f, or -l to display extended process information.
   • Exercise 3: Identify a specific running process by its name or ID using ps and grep.

6. Troubleshooting:

   • Examine common issues that may arise while using ps and how to resolve them.

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Learning Goals

• Master the ability to monitor and analyze system processes using the ps command.
• Understand the critical aspects of process management and how to interpret ps output for system insights.
• Apply best practices for using ps in different debugging and performance tuning scenarios.

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Priority

• Medium

[jbeadling]

The ps command is used to provide info about the currently running processes in the operating system. It gives you snapshot view of active processes on your system.

Below we us the command ps aux to display all running processes and then we pipe the command and grep systemd+ to look up that process: