lfs-book/appendixa/procps-desc.xml

<sect2><title>Contents of Procps</title>

<para>Last checked against version &procps-contversion;.</para>

<sect3><title>Program Files</title>
<para>free, kill, oldps, pgrep, pkill, ps, skill, snice, sysctl, tload, top, 
vmstat, w and watch</para></sect3>

<sect3><title>Descriptions</title>

<sect4><title>free</title>
<para>free displays the total amount of free and used physical and swap memory 
in the system, as well as the shared memory and buffers used by the 
kernel.</para></sect4>

<sect4><title>kill</title>
<para>kills sends signals to processes.</para></sect4>

<sect4><title>oldps and ps</title>
<para>ps gives a snapshot of the current processes.</para></sect4>

<sect4><title>pgrep</title>
<para>pgrep looks up processes based on name and other attributes.</para></sect4>

<sect4><title>pkill</title>
<para>pkill signals processes based on name and other attributes.</para></sect4>

<sect4><title>skill</title>
<para>skill sends signals to process matching a criteria.</para></sect4>

<sect4><title>snice</title>
<para>snice changes the scheduling priority for process matching a 
criteria.</para></sect4>

<sect4><title>sysctl</title>
<para>sysctl modifies kernel parameters at runtime.</para></sect4>

<sect4><title>tload</title>
<para>tload prints a graph of the current system load average to the 
specified tty (or the tty of the tload process if 
none is specified).</para></sect4>

<sect4><title>top</title>
<para>top provides an ongoing look at processor activity 
in real time.</para></sect4>

<sect4><title>vmstat</title>
<para>vmstat reports information about processes, memory, paging, block IO, 
traps, and cpu activity.</para></sect4>

<sect4><title>w</title>
<para>w displays information about the users currently on the machine, and 
their processes.</para></sect4>

<sect4><title>watch</title>
<para>watch runs command repeatedly, displaying its output (the first 
screen full).</para></sect4>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>Library Files</title>
<para>libproc.so</para></sect3>

<sect3><title>Descriptions</title>

<sect4><title>libproc</title>
<para>libproc is the library against which most of the programs in this
set are linked to save disk space by implementing common functions only
once.</para></sect4>

</sect3>

</sect2>