6.43. Installing Procps-2.0.7

Estimated build time:           1 minute
Estimated required disk space:  2 MB

6.43.1. Installation of Procps

Install Procps by running the following commands:

make &&
make XSCPT='' install &&
mv /usr/bin/kill /bin

6.43.2. Command explanations

make XSCPT='' install: This will set the Makefile variable XSCPT to an empty value so that the XConsole installation is disabled. Otherwise "Make install" tries to copy the file XConsole to /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults. And that directory does not exist, because X is not installed.

6.43.3. Contents

The Procps package contains the free, kill, oldps, ps, skill, snice, sysctl, tload, top, uptime, vmstat, w and watch programs.

6.43.4. Description

6.43.4.1. free

free displays the total amount of free and used physical and swap memory in the system, as well as the shared memory and buffers used by the kernel.

6.43.4.2. kill

kills sends signals to processes.

6.43.4.3. oldps and ps

ps gives a snapshot of the current processes.

6.43.4.4. skill

skill sends signals to process matching a criteria.

6.43.4.5. snice

snice changes the scheduling priority for process matching a criteria.

6.43.4.6. sysctl

sysctl modifies kernel parameters at runtime.

6.43.4.7. tload

tload prints a graph of the current system load average to the specified tty (or the tty of the tload process if none is specified).

6.43.4.8. top

top provides an ongoing look at processor activity in real time.

6.43.4.9. uptime

uptime gives a one line display of the following information: the current time, how long the system has been running, how many users are currently logged on, and the system load averages for the past 1, 5, and 15 minutes.

6.43.4.10. vmstat

vmstat reports information about processes, memory, paging, block IO, traps, and cpu activity.

6.43.4.11. w

w displays information about the users currently on the machine, and their processes.

6.43.4.12. watch

watch runs command repeatedly, displaying its output (the first screen full).

6.43.5. Dependencies

Procps-2.0.7 needs the following to be installed:


sh from the bash package

as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package
strip from the binutils package

install from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

gcc from the gcc package

grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
pwd from the sh-utils package

sort from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package