Last time I checked my running processes it seemed really high. I want to cut back on un-needed processes to optimize my system. How many should normally be running?

BTW Running Slackware 12 with XFCE

Hi,

Is your system sluggish or just slower than normal?
What does 'top' show?
What does 'ps' show?

You should 'man top' and 'man ps'.

One way would be to trim away what you don't want to use. The output of the above commands just provides the image of what is going on with your system. If for example you don't use 'NFS' then don't start it. Look at '/etc/rc.d/' but be careful what you do here because some of it is necessary.

You could just run 'pkgtool' to run the scripts to start/stop system daemon (services) you want at startup of your system.

Hi,

'Normal' depends on what you want/need. I need apache, mysql, sshd and ldap (among others), which will increase the count by roughly 15 processes. There are also kernel/system related processes that you may or may not see (and cannot do much about if they are there). An example being this entry in my process list:

root 587 2 0 17:20 ? 00:00:00 [appledisplay]

You will not see this one in most process lists, but my system needs it.
At the moment I've got 116 processes that are 'running' (ldap is not running), I guess that around a 100 could be seen as base and around 120 as' normal'.

It also matters which WM you are using, I bet that xfce uses a lot less processes then kde or gnome.

BTW: I'm running LFS atm with xfce.

Hope this helps.

Well I have 88 total tasks 1 running and 87 sleeping. But what I did notice is that I have " 497172k total, 405712k used" of memory. How can I tell what is using all the memory?

Hi,

Linux is designed to use most RAM for cache and buffers and that's why on most linux boxes you will see a 'small' number in the free column. Most of the time this will also mean that nothing is wrong. If your machine starts to get sluggish and there is a lot of swapping, then you could have a problem.

Although it is probably possible to read what's actually in the cache, a lot of it will be from stuff that isn't running any more, but is still there in case the program is started again/becomes active again.

top will show you the amount of memory that an active process uses (and will show a possible memory unfriendly program).

Hope this helps.

Hi,

You could reference the 'Slackware's rc init tour' to get a better understanding of the init.

Linux does use the available memory very efficiently. Some people get scared when they see that most of the memory is used. Not understanding the environment causes the M$windows mindset, not a flame bait. M$ has always referred that some problems solutions could be an increase in available memory by the user to prevent a problem from developing instead of correcting the programs problem(s).

As for the Linux kernel swapping, paging and release of space is controlled by the kernel scheme with the environment of the system in mind.

I would like to reference you to the Linux Kernel section of the 'Slackware-Links' which was compiled from 'Slackware LQ Suggestions Links!'. Within the Linux Kernel section you will find a lot of information to assist you in understanding the kernel.