identifying what's running ( was Re: [Novalug] "10 Linux commands you've never used" article)

Beartooth karhunhammas@Lserv.com
Tue Feb 20 12:59:24 EST 2007


On Tue, 20 Feb 2007, donjr wrote:

> On Tue, 2007-02-20 at 10:45 -0500, luigi12081@cox.net wrote:

>> I use pstree all the time!  Super useful piped to less.
[...]
> While pstree has a nice output, I normally use:
>  ps xaf
> as it conveys more information to me.

 	That brings up a question I've been wanting a way to 
articulate.

 	If I run such a command -- or just open the GUI system 
monitor and click on Processes -- I normally find innumerable 
things going on that I don't know straight up about. Not even, 
for instance, whether to use "man" or something (what?) else in 
order to find out what they are or what they do -- least of all 
to find a first approximation in plain English, such as "runs 
your terminal" or "runs one of the tabs on your terminal" for the 
admittedly obvious "gnome-terminal" and its subattendant entries.

 	Is there a panacea? Or a memorable rule of thumb for 
deciding what to try first?

-- 
Beartooth Neo-Redneck, Linux Evangelist
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html



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