Chapter 8. Operating system performance tuning 213
Performance tuning options
The first step is to ensure that the system performance problem is because of the
CPU and not one of the other subsystems. If it is the CPU that is causing the
server bottleneck, perform these tasks to improve performance:
Ensure that no unnecessary programs are running in the background, by
using the ps -ef command. If such programs are found, stop them and use
the cron command to schedule them to run on off-peak hours.
Identify non-critical, CPU-intensive processes by using the top command and
modify their priority using the renice command.
In an SMP-based machine, try using the taskset command to bind the
processes to CPUs to ensure that processes are not hopping ...