System Management Concepts: Operating System and Devices

Chapter 12. Process Management

The process is the entity that the operating system uses to control the use of system resources. AIX Version 4 introduces the use of threads to control processor-time consumption, but most of the system management tools still require the administrator to refer to the process in which a thread is running, rather than to the thread itself.

See the AIX 5L Version 5.1 System User's Guide: Operating System and Devices for basic information on managing your own processes; for example, restarting or stopping a process that you started or scheduling a process for a later time. This guide also defines terms that describe processes, such as daemons and zombies.

For task procedures, see Chapter 12, Process Management in the AIX 5L Version 5.1 System Management Concepts: Operating System and Devices.

Tools are available to:

• Observe the creation, cancellation, identity, and resource consumption of processes
  • The ps command is used to report process IDs, users, CPU-time consumption, and other attributes.
  • The who -u command reports the shell process ID of logged-on users.
  • The svmon commad is used to report process real-memory consumption. (See Performance Toolbox Version 2 and 3 for AIX: Guide and Reference for information on the svmon command.)
  • The acct command mechanism writes records at process termination summarizing the process's resource use. (See how to set up an accounting system in Accounting Overview .)
• Control the priority level at which a process contends for the CPU.
  • The nice command causes a command to be run with a specified process priority. (See AIX 5L Version 5.1 System User's Guide: Operating System and Devices.)
  • The renice command changes the priority of a given process.
• Terminate processes that are out of control.
  • The kill command sends a termination signal to one or more processes.
• Tune the operating system's process-management mechanisms.
  • The schedtune command permits changes to the process scheduler parameters. See AIX 5L Version 5.1 Performance Management Guide for information on the schedtune command.