Your GNU/Linux computer is an amazing machine. It can display images. It can run programs. It can perform dozens of functions all at the same time. How can you keep track of all this activity? By monitoring the processes that your computer runs, and one of the best ways to monitor and control processes is by using the command line.

It occurred to me that I was running 3 CPU-bound processes on the same machine and that the processes might be stepping on each other's toes. It's possible that if the server is running on core 4 one second and the producer is running there the next, the level 1 cache of that core could be ruined for the server the next time it ambles over there.

Usually when we talk about programs for editing images we think to graphic programs such as The Gimp or photoshop, but they are not the only alternative.

The Postal project includes three programs aimed at benchmarking mail server performance. The main program, postal, sends email messages to a specified list of destination addresses at a specified rate. Postal can let you see how fast your system can process incoming email and thus can help you measure improvements to your mail server when you are making software and hardware changes.

MySQL is a widely used and fast SQL database server. It is a client/server implementation that consists of a server daemon (mysqld) and many different client programs/libraries.

The two fundamental concepts in a Linux operating system are processes and time slice. A process is an instance of a program that is being executed by the computer’s operating system. When we say that two computers are communicating with each other, we mean that two processes, one running on each computer, are in communication with each other.

A true wizard doesn’t just run processes, a true wizard knows how to communicate with those processes through signals to stop, restart, and even kill processes. This may sound like arcane and obscure knowledge, but if you follow along, you’ll be managing your processes like an adept in no time.

There are many different GUI based process monitors available for Linux systems. It seems that each desktop environment or window manager has its own solution. The one common process monitor is the command line terminal based top command.

lsof is used to LiSt Open Files, hence the command’s name. It’s a handy tool normally used to list the open files on a system along with the associated processes or users, and can also be used to gather information on your system’s network connections. When run without options, lsof lists all open files along with all of the active processes that have them open.