Gathering information about processes

Processes are the running instance of a program. Several processes run on a computer, and each process is assigned a unique identification number called a process ID (PID). Multiple instances of the same program with the same name can be executed at the same time, but they all will have different PIDs. A process consists of several attributes, such as which user owns the process, the amount of memory used by the program, CPU time used by the program, and so on. This recipe shows how to gather information about processes.

Getting ready

Important commands related to process management are top, ps, and pgrep. Let's see how we can gather information about processes.

How to do it...

ps is an important tool for gathering information about the processes. It provides information on which user owns the process, the time when a process started, the command path used for executing the process, PID, the terminal it is attached with (TTY), the memory used by the process...