4 Controlling Processes
A process is the abstraction used by UNIX to represent a running program. It’s the object through which a program’s use of memory, processor time, and I/O resources can be managed and monitored.
It is part of the UNIX philosophy that as much work as possible be done within the context of processes, rather than handled specially by the kernel. Although portions of the kernel cannot be made to fit this model, it is used by most system software. System and user processes all follow the same rules, so you can use a single set of tools to control them both.
Get UNIX System Administration Handbook, Third Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
