lfs-book/appendixa/procps-desc.xml

<sect2>
<title>Contents</title>

<para>The Procps package contains the free, kill, oldps, ps, skill, snice,
sysctl, tload, top, uptime, vmstat, w and watch programs.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2><title>Description</title>

<sect3><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></sect3>

<sect3><title>kill</title>
<para>kills sends signals to processes.</para></sect3>

<sect3><title>oldps and ps</title>
<para>ps gives a snapshot of the current processes.</para></sect3>

<sect3><title>skill</title>
<para>skill sends signals to process matching a criteria.</para></sect3>

<sect3><title>snice</title>
<para>snice changes the scheduling priority for process matching a 
criteria.</para></sect3>

<sect3><title>sysctl</title>
<para>sysctl modifies kernel parameters at runtime.</para></sect3>

<sect3><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></sect3>

<sect3><title>top</title>
<para>top provides an ongoing look at processor activity 
in real time.</para></sect3>

<sect3><title>uptime</title>
<para>uptime gives a one line display of the following information: the current 
time, how long the system has been running, how many users are currently 
logged on, and the system load averages for the past 1, 5, and 15 
minutes.</para></sect3>

<sect3><title>vmstat</title>
<para>vmstat reports information about processes, memory, paging, block IO, 
traps, and cpu activity.</para></sect3>

<sect3><title>w</title>
<para>w displays information about the users currently on the machine, and 
their processes.</para></sect3>

<sect3><title>watch</title>
<para>watch runs command repeatedly, displaying its output (the first 
screen full).</para></sect3>

</sect2>