Help with processes and memory stuff for Linux

[ryan198921]

1. What is the highest priority process currently running on my system? What is its nice number?

2. What command is used to change the nice number of an already running process?

3. What do the three decimal numbers in the display from uptime mean?

4. what does the 'u' in ps waux stand for?

5. what command will show a text representation of the lineage of all processes on the system?

6. What is a PID?

7. what command will show process names along with their PIDs and PPIDs?

8. what command will allow you to start a process at a different nice number?

9. On a linux system, what is the biggest (lowest priority) nice number?

10. On a linux system, what is the smallest (highest priority) nice number?

11. In plain English, what is the difference between VSZ and RSS in a ps display?

12. Whats the difference between CPU utilization and load average?

13. What are two differences between du and df?

14. How would you call the top command in such a way that it refreshes its display every 3 seconds?

15. On a linux system, how would you display the amount of disk space used on each physical partition, in Kilobytes,
Megabytes and gigabytes?

16. What are 3 ways to handle disk shortage problems?

17. briefly describe, in English as plain and simple as possible, the meaning of four columns from a vmstat display.

18. How to kill non-essential services running on my system and prevent them from starting on next boot?

 

[Ijack]

You want us to do your class assignment for you? You'll never learn anything that way.

 

[randomizer]

Come on, you could have at least made it sound like something other than homework. Nevertheless, I will give you all the answers: http://linuxmanpages.com/

 

[Pyroflea]

~$man man

 

[ryan198921]

XD yes it is my hw, but never the less, I didn't know how to do it, and when I get the answers I am actually going to sit and do it to learn, cuz I actually do care! And thanks!

 

[Ijack]

No. You'll learn more by doing the research for yourself and finding out the answers rather than asking someone here to spell it all out for you (although randomizer did give you the definitive, complete answer to all of your questions). And, let's face it, it's not very fair on all your classmates if we give you all the answers.

 

[Guest]

hey ryan thanks for posting this. I'm in your class!!! LOL. thought I would just give warrant to ijacks comment, although I will make one correction. We arent learning anything through this class. The teacher is a joke! Rather than being titled Linux 1 this class should be titled how to search the internet for an answer to a question! That is all we are doing and all we are gaining experience in. The teacher tells us a bunch of random crap for 3 hours then says now go online and find the answers. Teaching my ass! What am i paying him to do? Honestly, after spending 20 minutes searching through blogs and articles for answers to one question Im too exhausted and frustrated to retain any information i'm looking at. I just say "thank goodness for finding the answer" and right it down without hardly looking at it so i can move on to the next twenty questions in time to get some sleep. What a joke of a class! What has education come to?!?!

 

[Ijack]

Well, let's just hope that your teacher doesn't read Tom's Hardware.

 

[Guest]

I hope he does, unless of course he is afraid to have his feelings hurt and be told he's a bad teacher. If he was a good teacher he would take this posting as a challenge and learn how to become a better teacher, however I'm confident he is more like the former than the latter. Besides we are not cheating, this is how he tells us to get our information is to search the web. Honestly whats the difference between getting your information for 20 questions from 20 different websites with information posted by someone else or from 1? Frankly its a tribute to efficiency and declaration affirming poor teaching methods

 

[Ijack]

If you can't see the difference between asking someone to give you the answer to 20 questions and seeking out the information yourself to answer those questions then I guess that any teaching - good or poor - is going to be wasted on you.

 

[Guest]

if you can see a difference between visiting 20 different websites and writing down an answer and going to one website and writing down 20 answers than i suppose there is no reason to debate on the matter. i am glad to see a convenient approach to getting the answers not because i am lazy but because the practice asserted by the teacher is fruitless. It is a poor method of learning and it is not a method of teaching to say i am going to provide you with 20 questions of which i will spend next to zero time discussing with you, now you go and find the answers. I can come up with 20 questions that i dont know about linux and go search the web for the answers without paying 156$ a credit to allow myself access to someone who has come up with those questions for me. Regardless of whether you agree with me or not the link that the individual provided on this blog did not simply provide the answers nor did it give information on all of the subjects discussed. As a result, I have now visited some 40 websites and written down answers to half of the questions assigned. Being that I still have learned little to nothing doesn't it sound better to visit one website and get the answers rather than 100 to get the answers? At the very least, i would be spared some hours that i could use trying to learn what i have just been asked to research. i would not disagree with you on this matter if the exercise, done with the proper method applied, yielded some positive results, however it does not, regardless of the method you use to acquire the information, bring you closer to the process of understanding. Therefore, being that with this manner of "teaching" I have little opportunity, aside from that which i create on my own, to learn anything I would prefer to spend less time pursuing this useless activity. I will have to come to understand this material myself, using my own methods as the ones the teacher has provided are not constructive. I would rather have purchased a book for 40 dollars rather than a "book on tape" (teacher) for over 500$. Conclusion, I dont blame this student for posting his homework assignment online.

 

[Ijack]

But the truth is that those sort of questions fool no-one. (People keep posting their coursework expecting someone to do it for them.) And no-one is going to answer them for you (except for the one extremely good answer that was given - take heed of that, read the manual pages and you will learn a lot). What does that tell you?

If you think that the teaching is inadequate then complain to the college. Or buy a book, as you suggest. But just parroting a list of answers given to you isn't going to profit you much. The people here with enough experience to be able to answer those questions know the value of doing the work for yourself rather than relying on others to do it for you. Actually researching the questions - whether on the Internet or via books - is not the same as just asking someone to give you the answers. How to do that research is something that you need to learn.

 

[Pyroflea]

I can tell you right now that what ijack is telling you is fantastic advice. I'm a student at a post-secondary institute as well, and I know for a fact that just asking somebody for answers will get you nowhere. Some of my teachers are bloody awful as well, but you just need to sit down, read a text book, and Google whatever you don't find. Asking somebody else to do your homework for you won't help you train for your career at all.

 

[Guest]

appreciated but you missed my point. If the homework is worthless then why waste time doing it if there is an easier way? The knowledge comes from applying the answers in a practical hands-on way and from studying the homework not from gathering the answers. No one gains info from searching for answers and writing them down in the answer column. You gain knowledge by practicing and studying which is about 5% of what we do for this class sadly.

 

[Pyroflea]

Then don't do the work. Problem solved.

 

[ryanla2r]

Wow, this much argument over a simple thing.. see some of us work 60 plus hours and have a kid and a house to take care of, and dont have lots of time to spend researching.....

 

[Pyroflea]

Wow, this much argument over a simple thing.. see some of us work 60 plus hours and have a kid and a house to take care of, and dont have lots of time to spend researching.....

I'm not trying to be a jerk about it. I know what it's like, I am going to school full time, paying rent, paying insurance, paying bills... you get the picture. When you registered for school, you should have assumed that your life would be consumed by it; that's how school is. If you don't have the time to do your homework assignments, then you can't put forth a full effort, and there's no point being at school. We're just trying to be helpful in a roundabout kind of way here. You're not gonna learn anything by just having us answering the questions. You'll learn by finding articles and papers written on the subject, and reading the background behind it. If you don't feel the assignment is fair, take it up with your teacher.

 

[Guest]

Well again the point is missed. Its not that the assignment is not fair, its not that I dont want to put in effort, I'm an A student and already have a 4 year degree, its not about getting an easy answer. The point is the assignment teaches you nothing or at least next to nothing! It is pointless. its like when you were forced to learn Washingtons birthday in highschool or any other arbitrary fact. The fact alone is worthless unless you discuss how it impacts the nation and what effects it might have had on the development of the country...what it means to Americans now... Having said that obtaining the answers in a quick way seems to me the best option. Look this really is semantics at this point. The link didnt give all the answers anyways so for all that was worried that us kids wouldn't do our homework, i still had to visit some 40+ websites to complete my assignment and I wont learn anything until I study it and practice it on my system. I'm also a little irritated cause im watching the twins screw up. but we have bases loaded right now. Go Twinkies! P.S. thanks to folks on this website that do help out with questions cause academic community is huge!!!

 

[randomizer]

Wow, this much argument over a simple thing.. see some of us work 60 plus hours and have a kid and a house to take care of, and dont have lots of time to spend researching.....

Others of us may be in a similar situation and don't have the time to do other peoples' homework. People who have no interest in doing things for themselves are simply a drain on the intellectual resources available on this (and other) forum(s). We help those who help themselves.

And since you're so adamant that you gain nothing from your assignment, perhaps you can spare a thought for those who gain nothing from providing help, and only ask that those who seek help put in a reasonable amount of effort themselves. Simply throwing a bunch of questions into a thread is just poor etiquette.

 

[Guest]

thats a fair point. If simply posting your questions on a forum drains the intellectual community's resources than it isn't beneficial to people who may be more deserving of receiving help. yeah I'll accept that argument.

 

[Ijack]

Wow, this much argument over a simple thing.. see some of us work 60 plus hours and have a kid and a house to take care of, and dont have lots of time to spend researching.....

If you work 60 hours plus a week and have a kid and house to take care of and still have time to take a course at a college then I sympathize with your position. But if you are that dedicated then I'm surprised that you can't see that you're wasting your time if you ask others to do your coursework for you. That is not what I call education.

I've no problem with helping people with problems, and I hope my record on these forums speaks for itself in that respect, but I don't think that it is doing anybody a favour to do their school or college homework for them.

 

[audiovoodoo]

One of the reasons I post down here is to help others, the other is to improve my knowledge. It alarms me the number of times I've solved things for people within the first three replies from Google.

I made the mistake of giving up on maths as I knew I'd have a calculator, some people seem to give up on retaining any knowledge as they know they can look it up. Personally I've found that the balance sits somewhere between the two ends of the scale. You don't need to remember everything, just have an understanding of the subject and to know what you're actually looking for.

 

[Guest]

This was a useless topic from the absolute beginning. Haha, thanks for fueling this you guys. At the end of it all it was a good laugh, I guess? I spend this much time doing this and that... blah blah blah.

Okay? We get it! Everyone has problems managing time. I am in school too, boohoo, whoa is me. Sorry, you guys sound like 5 year-olds though bickering and carrying on about nothing.

Who's better than who? Round 2? FIGHT!

 

[Pyroflea]

This was a useless topic from the absolute beginning. Haha, thanks for fueling this you guys. At the end of it all it was a good laugh, I guess? I spend this much time doing this and that... blah blah blah.

Okay? We get it! Everyone has problems managing time. I am in school too, boohoo, whoa is me. Sorry, you guys sound like 5 year-olds though bickering and carrying on about nothing.

Who's better than who? Round 2? FIGHT!

We were trying to get the point across that we help people that help themselves, and it's against our beliefs to just do people's work for them. Making childish remarks doesn't improve the situation.

 

[audiovoodoo]

This was a useless topic from the absolute beginning. Haha, thanks for fueling this you guys. At the end of it all it was a good laugh, I guess? I spend this much time doing this and that... blah blah blah.

Okay? We get it! Everyone has problems managing time. I am in school too, boohoo, whoa is me. Sorry, you guys sound like 5 year-olds though bickering and carrying on about nothing.

Who's better than who? Round 2? FIGHT!

No, we were all in complete agreement that you are nothing but an arrogant tosser.