Linux System and Process Management Commands : Part 2 -

Table of Contents

nmon

nmon shows performance data about cpu, memory, network, disks, file systems, nfs, top processes, resources, power micro-partition. Command keys to show following details

m = Memory
j = Filesystems
d = Disks
n = Network
V = Virtual Memory
r = Resource
N = NFS
k = kernel
t = Top-processes
. = only busy disks/procs

ps

Displays information about a selection of the active processes. Some examples of ps is

Display the Processes Running in the Current Shell

ps

Display All the Currently Running Processes

ps -A

Display All the Processes Associated with the Current Terminal

ps -T

Display All the Processes Associated with a Particular User

ps -u UserName

Display All the Processes Associated with a Particular User Group

ps –fG UserGroupName

Example

ps –fG root

cron

Cron allows users to run commands or scripts at a given time or date. Cron is basically used to schedule scripts to be executed periodically. The detailed explanation can be found here.

dmesg

Prints messages from the kernel ring buffer. Example, List all loaded driver

$ dmesg | less

[    0.000000] Linux version 5.4.0-88-generic (buildd@lgw01-amd64-008) (gcc version 9.3.0 (Ubuntu 9.3.0-17ubuntu1~20.04)) #99-Ubuntu SMP Thu Sep 23 17:29:00 UTC 2021 (Ubuntu 5.4.0-88.99-generic 5.4.140)
[    0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-5.4.0-88-generic root=/dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv ro debian-installer/custom-installation=/custom find_preseed=/preseed.cfg auto preseed/file=/floppy/preseed.cfg automatic-ubiquity noprompt priority=critical locale=en_US console-setup/modelcode=evdev
[    0.000000] KERNEL supported cpus:
[    0.000000]   Intel GenuineIntel
[    0.000000]   AMD AuthenticAMD
[    0.000000]   Hygon HygonGenuine
[    0.000000]   Centaur CentaurHauls
[    0.000000]   zhaoxin   Shanghai
[    0.000000] x86/fpu: Supporting XSAVE feature 0x001: 'x87 floating point registers'
[    0.000000] x86/fpu: Supporting XSAVE feature 0x002: 'SSE registers'
[    0.000000] x86/fpu: Supporting XSAVE feature 0x004: 'AVX registers'
[    0.000000] x86/fpu: xstate_offset[2]:  576, xstate_sizes[2]:  256
[    0.000000] x86/fpu: Enabled xstate features 0x7, context size is 832 bytes, using 'compacted' format.
[    0.000000] BIOS-provided physical RAM map:

List all Detected Devices

dmesg | grep sda

Clear dmesg Buffer Logs

dmesg -c

Monitoring dmesg in Real Time

watch "dmesg | tail -20"

journalctl

Journalctl is used to displaying logs from journald, systemd’s logging service. Since journald stores log data in a binary format instead of a plaintext format, journalctl is the standard way of reading log messages processed by journald.

Display all logs

journalctl

To display the output in reverse order with new entries first

journalctl -r

Displays the messages that systemd generated during the last time the machine started:

journalctl -b

Display messages for systemd network service

journalctl -u systemd-networkd

kill

Used to kill a process. Examples

terminating process with process ID

kill [pid]

Sending a custom signal to a process

kill -s [signal] [pid]

List all the signal you can send

$ kill -l

 1) SIGHUP       2) SIGINT       3) SIGQUIT      4) SIGILL       5) SIGTRAP
 6) SIGABRT      7) SIGBUS       8) SIGFPE       9) SIGKILL     10) SIGUSR1
11) SIGSEGV     12) SIGUSR2     13) SIGPIPE     14) SIGALRM     15) SIGTERM
16) SIGSTKFLT   17) SIGCHLD     18) SIGCONT     19) SIGSTOP     20) SIGTSTP
21) SIGTTIN     22) SIGTTOU     23) SIGURG      24) SIGXCPU     25) SIGXFSZ
26) SIGVTALRM   27) SIGPROF     28) SIGWINCH    29) SIGIO       30) SIGPWR
31) SIGSYS      34) SIGRTMIN    35) SIGRTMIN+1  36) SIGRTMIN+2  37) SIGRTMIN+3
38) SIGRTMIN+4  39) SIGRTMIN+5  40) SIGRTMIN+6  41) SIGRTMIN+7  42) SIGRTMIN+8
43) SIGRTMIN+9  44) SIGRTMIN+10 45) SIGRTMIN+11 46) SIGRTMIN+12 47) SIGRTMIN+13
48) SIGRTMIN+14 49) SIGRTMIN+15 50) SIGRTMAX-14 51) SIGRTMAX-13 52) SIGRTMAX-12
53) SIGRTMAX-11 54) SIGRTMAX-10 55) SIGRTMAX-9  56) SIGRTMAX-8  57) SIGRTMAX-7
58) SIGRTMAX-6  59) SIGRTMAX-5  60) SIGRTMAX-4  61) SIGRTMAX-3  62) SIGRTMAX-2
63) SIGRTMAX-1  64) SIGRTMAX

The number can also be used to send singnal

kill -s [Signal_Number] [pid]

Example

kill -s 9 [pid]

Kill all running process in one go

kill -s KILL -1

killall

killall command kill process by process name. Lets see the examples

Killing a process

killall [process_name]

By-default killall is case-sensitive, use -i to disable case sensitivity

killall -I [process_name]

Ask before killing process

killall -i [process_name]

Killing a process without any messages like process does not exists

killall -q [process_name]

Kill all process owned by a user

killall -u [user_name]

Kill processes based on time

killall -o 5h

the above command kill process older then 5 hours. Another example the below command kill the processes less then 4 hours old.

kill -y 4h

Make syscall returns, only after process die

kill -w [process_name]

sleep

Delay/Sleep for a specified amount of time.

sleep 10

above command make execution sleep for 10 seconds, we can aslo use suffixes like s for seconds, for m minuts, h for hours.

sleep 10s

sleep for 10 second.

sleep 1h

sleep for 1 hour.

sleep 5m

sleep for 5 minutes.

wait

The wait command waits for a background process to exit. Syntax

wait [PID]

Example Use

$ sleep 30 &
[1] 40560

$ wait 40560

Another example :

ping -c10 google.com &
ping -c10 facebook.com &
ping -c10 linkedin.com &
wait
echo Done

Linux System and Process Management Commands : Part 2