Job Management in Linux

Linux Job Management, Process Management, and Help
from: CTDP Linux Files and Command Reference Version 0.8.0)
by Mark Allen

Linux Help Commands

apropos

apropos keyword - Show all commands with the keyword in their description. The same as the "man -k" command.

help

Bash shell help for the bash builtin command list. The help command gets help for a particular command.

man

Get help from the manual for a command.

man

man -k keyword - Show all commands with the keyword in their description

"man 2 kill" - Display page 2 of the kill command

manpath

Determine user's searchpath for manpages.

info

Documentation on Linux commands and programs similar to the man pages but navigation is organized different.

Linux Job Management

at

Similar to cron but run only once.

atq

Lists the user's pending jobs. If the user is the superuser, everybody's jobs are listed.

atrm

Deletes at jobs.

atrun

Run jobs queued for later execution

batch

Executes commands when system load levels drop below 0.8 or value specified in atrun invocation.

cron

A deamon used to set commands to be run at specific times. Starts the commands in the crontab file. Used to clean up temporary files periodically in the /var/tmp and /tmp directories.

nice

Run a program with modified scheduling priority.

nohup

Run a command immune to hangups, with output to a non-tty.

watch

Execute a program periodically showing output full screen.

Linux Process management

bg

Starts a suspended process in the background

fg

Starts a suspended process in the foreground

gitps

A graphical process viewer and killer program.

jobs

Lists the jobs running

kill

Ex: "kill 34" - Effect: Kill or stop the process with the process ID number 34.

killall

Kill processes by name. Can check for and restart processes.

pidof

Find the process ID of a running program

ps

Get the status of one or more processes. Options:

• u (more info)
• a (see all)
• -l (technical info)

Meanings:

• PPID-parent process ID
• PID-process ID

ps

ax |more to see all processes including daemons

pstree

Display the tree of running processes.

sa

Generates a summary of information about users' processes that are stored in the /var/log/pacct file.

skill

Report process status.

snice

Report process status.

top

Display the processes that are using the most CPU resources.

CTRL-C

Kills the current job.

&

At the end of the command makes it run in the background.