Monitoring and handling process execution

Oracle Solaris 11 offers several methods to monitor and control process execution, and there isn't one best tool to do this because every technique has some advantages.

Getting ready

This recipe requires a virtual machine (VirtualBox or VMware) running Oracle Solaris 11 installed with a 2 GB RAM at least. It's recommended that the system has more than one processor or core.

How to do it…

A common way to monitor processes on Oracle Solaris 11 is using the old and good ps command:

root@solaris11-1:~# ps -efcl -o s,uid,pid,zone,class,pri,vsz,rss,time,comm | more

According to the output shown in the previous screenshot, we have:

• S (status)

• UID (user ID)

• PID (process ID)

• ZsONE (zone)

• CLS (scheduling class)

• PRI (priority)

• VSZ (virtual memory size)

• RSS (resident set size)

• TIME (the time that the process runs on the CPU)

• COMMAND (the command used to start the process)

Additionally, possible process statuses are as follows:

• O (running on a processor)

• S (sleeping...