THE VIRTUAL SERVER HANDBOOK

While running top you can do the following:

To increase the number of processes listed

While top is running press "n"

To kill a process

1.

While top is running press "k"

2.

Enter the process ID (PID).

The left column stores the PID. You can kill multiple processes by entering

multiple PID numbers on one kill line with a space separating the PID

numbers.

Note:  Take care when killing a process. The only time that you should

kill a process is if a process is hung and using up your resources.

Defining top terminology

Load averages

The load averages at the top of the example is your

Virtual Server's total load with a history of one

minute, five minutes and fifteen minutes. A load

average over 1.0 is high for a Virtual Server.

Active processes

The active processes at the bottom of the example are

the processes currently running on your Virtual

Server.

Memory and Processes

A process is a program that is running, sleeping, or waiting. For example,

when your web receives a hit, HTTPD uses a process. If the programs you

have running exceed the memory limit, you will effectively shut down your

own virtual server. For example, if you have a "RealAudio" server that uses

four megabytes of memory you would only have half the virtual server

memory available for other processes.

To check the processes

From the command prompt:

% ps

For example, if you want to check the processes that start with POP, you

would enter:

% ps  ax | grep pop

The following is an example of killing a process:

% ps  ax | grep pop

% kill pid_number

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 1999  DIGITAL TOOLS  LLC.

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