UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi all,
When I issued command ps -ef|grep Vinay in a UNIX machine,
I got the following

Vinay 22491 1 255 Jun 18 ? 294248:53 -sh
Vinay 26628 1 255 Jun 18 ? 294237:33 -sh

Could you tell me what all process is running ? Please explain each of the fields.

Thanks in advance
Coolbhai

It would really help if you had stated WHAT UNIX you are using. Always post your OS and version.

Code:

User    Probably process ID(PID)  Parent PID   ?       Date   Terminal   ?   and command
Vinay           22491                   1       255  Jun 18    ?          294248:53 -sh

Here are the details:
HP-UX B.11.11 U 9000/800 4126747535 unlimited-user license
and the shell is Bourne shell

What is '255','?' and '-sh' ,what is the process mentioned by -sh ?

in Vinay 22491 1 255 Jun 18 ? 294248:53 -sh

Thanks in advance

When you grep those two lines out of the ps output, you discard the rest of the output. The first line is a header line that would label the fields. You should use:
ps -fu Vinay
which is much faster than doing ps -ef and then grepping a few lines. You should also do a "man ps" which would describe the fields being displayed.

The processes you list are in deep trouble and should be killed. 294248:53 is the cumulative execution time in minutes and seconds. That is an absurdly high value. 255 is the processor utilization which is used for scheduling. 255 is the max value so these processes are basicly in an infinite loop doing nothing except computation. -sh is a login shell but a login shell should have a tty assigned. This one has ? for tty which means it has become a daemon and has no tty. Each such process will fully utilize a cpu so if the box has 4 cpu's, 2 of them will have no idle time. If the system has less than 3 cpus, the system will have no idle time. The 255 does guarantee that these processes will have the lowest priority possible, so you can still get stuff done, but you still should kill these processes because they are simply wasting resources.

Thanks Mate..I am satisfied with your answer. Its what I needed and I am going to kill the process.