How do I monitor a process?

mad_ady · 11-05-2003, 03:03 PM

I have a process that from time to time (about every 2 minutes) causes my processor to work at 100% for about a second. The thing is I never found out which process does this. How can I find out? (maybe look in the logs, but which?)

Thanks!

david_ross · 11-05-2003, 03:13 PM

The easiest way is probably to run "top" then press "P" to sort by CPU usage then look at the top screen when the CPU is being used.

mad_ady · 11-06-2003, 10:40 AM

Thanks... I noticed that actually a couple of programs are responsible for this...
foomatic-rip (any ideas what it does?)
devfsd (I believe this is necessary for things to work)
gs (what does it do?)

david_ross · 11-06-2003, 02:01 PM

foomatic-rip is used in printing - can't remember exactly what
devfs is used to monitor filesystems
gs is ghostscript - used to viewing PostScript and PDF files.

Try looking at the man pages for more info. Perhaps you are creating pdfs via a printer driver or something?

alexchannell · 11-06-2003, 07:45 PM

I had the same problem, it was gs. I uninstalled and reinstalled, it went away.

mad_ady · 11-07-2003, 10:15 AM

I'll try that...
david: I wasn't using the printer... But I'll gladly keep it just to be able to use the damn thing!