Practical Linux

Managing Processes

As introduced in Chapter 27, "Managing Daemons," the Linux process model places significant importance on the ideas of process ownership and parent processes. Managing all the programs that run on a Linux system is a task that requires constant attention from the system administrator. The "mother of all processes" is called init, which is part of the kernel, and this process spawns all other processes, usually via the inittab file entries and the init scripts that define the system run levels.

Because Linux is a multiuser operating system, its processes also have other information attached to them. The user ID and the group ID, as well as a priority setting, are part of the process. You see, the process has all the rights of ...