Linux process management

It is always a good practice to find out/categorize processes running on a server based on their cpu and memory (RAM) usage. We can terminate/kill the unwanted processes causing high cpu load or memory consumption.

Here I use the process management application 'ps':

To view all running processes on the system we use

[root@server ~]# ps -aux

These options tell ps to show processes owned by all users (regardless of their terminal association) in a user-friendly format.

a - All processes except both session leaders and processes not associated with a terminal

u - Select by effective user ID (EUID) or name

x - also show processes not attached to a terminal

0 - User defined format

Top 10 cpu consuming processes

 [root@server ~]# ps axo stat,ruser,%cpu,comm,pid,euser | sort -nr | head -n 10

stat - status of the process

ruser - real user

%cpu - percentage of cpu utilized by process.

comm - command

Top 10 memory consuming processes

[root@server ~]# ps axo stat,ruser,%mem,comm,pid,euser | sort -nr | head -n 10

Useful Links -

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/show-all-running-processes-in-linux/

http://www.binarytides.com/linux-ps-command/

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-ps-kill-and-nice-to-manage-processes-in-linux