School of Engineering & Technology
Parlakhemundi Campus
Applied and Action Learning*
Experiment No: Date:
Aim
Linux Process Management
Software / Material, tools & equipment required (if any)
Slno. Name Specification Qnty.
1 Ubuntu Version 18.04 LTS 1
*Hands on & experimental Learning Page No:
Algorithm
Process:
An instance of a program is called a Process. In simple terms, any command that you give to your Linux
machine starts a new process.
Types of Processes:
Foreground Processes: They run on the screen and need input from the user. For example Office
Programs
Background Processes: They run in the background and usually do not need user input. For
example Antivirus.
1. Running a Foreground Process
To start a foreground process, you can either run it from the dashboard, or you can run it from the terminal.
When using the Terminal, you will have to wait, until the foreground process runs.
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2. Running a Background process
If you start a foreground program/process from the terminal, then you cannot work on the terminal, till the
program is up and running.
Particular, data-intensive tasks take lots of processing power and may even take hours to complete. You do
not want your terminal to be held up for such a long time.
To avoid such a situation, you can run the program and send it to the background so that terminal remains
available to you. Let's learn how to do this -
1. Fg
You can use the command "fg" to continue a program which was stopped and bring it to the foreground.
The simple syntax for this utility is: fg jobname
Example
1. Launch 'banshee' music player
2. Stop it with the 'ctrl +z' command
3. Continue it with the 'fg' utility.
Let's look at other important commands to manage processes -
2. Top
This utility tells the user about all the running processes on the Linux machine.
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Press 'q' on the keyboard to move out of the process display. The terminology follows:
3. PS
This command stands for 'Process Status'. It is similar to the "Task Manager" that pop-ups in a Windows
Machine when we use Cntrl+Alt+Del. This command is similar to 'top' command but the information
displayed is different.
To check all the processes running under a user, use the command -
ps ux
You can also check the process status of a single process, use the syntax -
ps PID
4. kill
This command terminates running processes on a Linux machine.
To use these utilities you need to know the PID (process id) of the process you want to kill
Syntax - kill PID
To find the PID of a process simply type
pidof Process name
Let us try it with an example.
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5. NICE
Linux can run a lot of processes at a time, which can slow down the speed of some high priority processes
and result in poor performance.
To avoid this, you can tell your machine to prioritize processes as per your requirements.
This priority is called Niceness in Linux, and it has a value between -20 to 19. The lower the Niceness
index, the higher would be a priority given to that task.
The default value of all the processes is 0.
To start a process with a niceness value other than the default value use the following syntax
nice -n 'Nice value' process name
If there is some process already running on the system, then you can 'Renice' its value using syntax.
renice 'nice value' -p 'PID'
To change Niceness, you can use the 'top' command to determine the PID (process id) and its Nice value.
Later use the renice command to change the value.
6. DF
This utility reports the free disk space(Hard Disk) on all the file systems.
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If you want the above information in a readable format, then use the command
'df -h'
7. Free
This command shows the free and used memory (RAM) on the Linux system.
You can use the arguments
free -m to display output in MB
free -g to display output in GB
Any running program or a command given to a Linux system is called a process
A process could run in foreground or background
The priority index of a process is called Nice in Linux. Its default value is 0, and it can vary between
20 to -19
The lower the Niceness index, the higher would be priority given to that task
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Comman
Description
d
bg To send a process to the background
fg To run a stopped process in the foreground
top Details on all Active Processes
ps Give the status of processes running for a user
ps PID Gives the status of a particular process
pidof Gives the Process ID (PID) of a process
kill PID Kills a process
nice Starts a process with a given priority
renice Changes priority of an already running process
df Gives free hard disk space on your system
free Gives free RAM on your system
*Hands on & experimental Learning Page No:
Conclusion / Inference:
Assessment
Full Marks
Marking Procedure Marks Obtained Re Marks
Problem understanding and
analysis 20
Performance Observation
/Calculation/Code/implementation 20
Result /inference /Output 20
Report 20
Viva 20
Total 100
Signature of Faculty Signature of the Student
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