Process

A process is an instance of a program. Any command you give to your Linux machine starts a new process.

All processes have a parent except for the first one, PID 1, usually systemd.

$ pstree # prints a tree hierarchy of parent-child processes

Each process has a priority and a niceness.

• Priority is a value from 0 to 139 assigned by the kernel. Processes with higher priority get more CPU time.
• Niceness is a value from -20 to 19 assigned by its user. Niceness means a willingness to accept a lower priority, to step aside and let other processes run.

So priority and niceness have an inverse relationship:

• high niceness → lower priority
• low niceness → higher priority
• default niceness of zero → no effect on priority

The kernel looks at niceness as a user request or suggestion for more or less priority.

Bottom line: If you want your program to have a higher priority, lower its niceness value.

$ nice -n <niceness> command # set niceness at program start 
$ sudo renice -20 -p <PID>   # change niceness on already running process

$ ps # Process Status
$ top # interactive ps, default order by percent CPU utilization
$ pidof <programname> # find the pid of a running program

Both ps and top have multiple arguments to control which processes are displayed and which output columns are displayed. top also has interactive commands like d to change the refresh delay and q to quit.

$ ps -e  # all processes
$ ps -eL  # all threads
$ ps -a  # all processes associated with a terminal
$ ps -aT  # all threads associated with a terminal

$ ps -q 42  # by process id
$ ps -T 48706  # show all threads for pid 48706
$ echo $!  # print the PID of the process immediately previously invoked
$ ps -C python3    # find by name of program

$ ps -f  # full format
$ ps -F  # really full format
$ ps -eo pid,tid,class,rtprio,ni,pri,psr,pcpu,stat,wchan:14,comm # columns

Popular output columns of ps and top:

• PID - process identifier (may be server or client)
• SPID - server process id
• PPID - parent process id
• PR - priority -20 to 20, assigned by system
• NI - niceness -20 to 19, inverse to priority, assigned by user
• PSR - processor on multicore CPU, on my 10th gen i5: 0 thru 7
• USER or UID - username of task owner
• TTY - TeleTYpe, the controlling terminal
  • ttyn - a hardwire keyboard/mouse or serial connection
  • pts/n - a telnet or ssh connection
• VIRT or SZ or VSZ - virtual memory used, in KB
• RES or RSS - physical memory used, in KB
• SHR - shared memory used, in KB
• %MEM - percent physical memory used
• S - state
  • D - uninterruptible sleep
  • R - running
  • S - sleeping
  • T - traced or stopped
  • Z - zombie
• STIME - the time when the process started
• TIME or TIME+ - total cumulative CPU time used so far
• %CPU or C - percent CPU time utilization
• COMMAND or CMD - command name used to start the process

A process is a running piece of code. Every process has a pid and a parent, because every process is started by a parent, except for the first one, the initd with pid 1.

$ ps -f 1
ppid is 0
/lib/systemd/systemd
started by the kernel
when you boot your machine it 
the only thing it does in user space is call systemd
the init system
that command starts everything else in user space

$ ls -l

the shell forked a child shell process, and then exec the child to ls the copy of itself was replaced by ls exec is a command, fork is not

$  sleep 360
ctrl-C  kill  sigint
ctrl-Z  suspend  sig
$ jobs # list jobs  [1] stopped, job number, not pid 
$ ps f # list tasks 3 by pid,  bash, sleep, ps f
$ sleep 701 &
$ sleep 702 &
$ sleep 703 %
$ jobs # list the shell’s job table
$ jobs # now lists four jobs running, most recently touched job is marked with +
$ jobs
[1]   Running                 sleep 701 &
[2]+  Stopped                 sleep 702
[3]-  Stopped                 sleep 703

$ ps ax | grep sleep # might be different from jobs, can be executed from another term

$ fg %3  # job number 3 to the foreground
$ fg # if no job number, fg operates on last accessed job
$ bg # if no job number, bg operates on the most recently touched job

$ kill -l # list all 64 signals by number and name
 1) SIGHUP
 2) SIGINT
 9) SIGKILL
15) SIGTERM
20) SIGTSTP - T stop, suspend, Ctrl-Z
18) SIGCONT - continue, fg or bg

$ kill -15 <pid> # send SIGTERM # terminate
$ kill <pid> # send SIGTERM by default
$ kill -2 <pid> # send SIGINT # interrupt
$ kill -1 <pid> # send SIGHUP # hang up
$ kill -9 <pid> # send SIGKILL # kernel kills the job now, no signal, no  opportunity to cleanup

$ sleep 900 &
$ kill -20 # job suspended, same as Ctrl-Z
$ kill -18 # job continued, same as bg

three things that can start a process from the shell

• binary executable
• internal shell command
• shell script

Hmm

• exec
• exit
• fork (not a command)

multicore multithreading CPU a CPU that can process two processes simultaneously each core can process two processes

• Intel: hyperthreading
• AMD: multithreading

Hmm

$ ps -a # user processes, created by user, associated with a shell session, tty named
$ ps -e # system processes, created by daemons, tty = ?

$ disown

Recommended Video: Youtube, Engineer Man, Linux Processes and the role of init, fork and exec, ps, kill, fg, bg, jobs

$ ps af
$ ps ao ppid,pid,pgid,tty,sess,sid,stat,time,command -H

Here are the different values that the s, stat and state output specifiers (header “STAT” or “S”) will display to describe the state of a process:

     D    uninterruptible sleep (usually IO)
     R    running or runnable (on run queue)
     S    interruptible sleep (waiting for an event to complete)
     T    stopped, either by a job control signal or because it is being traced.
     W    paging (not valid since the 2.6.xx kernel)
     X    dead (should never be seen)
     Z    defunct ("zombie") process, terminated but not reaped by its parent.

For BSD formats and when the stat keyword is used, additional characters may be displayed:

     <    high-priority (not nice to other users)
     N    low-priority (nice to other users)
     L    has pages locked into memory (for real-time and custom IO)
     s    is a session leader
     l    is multi-threaded (using CLONE_THREAD, like NPTL pthreads do)
     +    is in the foreground process group.