Simon Burge writes:
You may want to try what I do with some of our machines - instead
of killing and restarting the program, send it a STOP or a CONT
signal (I assume Linux has these signals available, I'm a BSD and
SysV person).
Yes, Linux has them, being a mostly POSIX-compliant UNIX, which is
closer to System V in some ways, closer to BSD in other ways, and a
merge of them in yet other ways.
The primary differences between this method and simply killing it
and restarting it are:
1. This method doesn't generate a save file when the STOP is sent
(this could be changed at a cost in reaction time to the STOP).
2. This method still occupies a process slot, swap space, etc., during
pauses (usually only minor annoyances if your system has a reasonable
amount of swap space).
3. This method pauses and resumes faster and with less I/O, making
slightly better use of the idle time that's available (most of
this advantage would be lost if STOP generated a save file).
See 'kill -l' (lower case L; on many UNIX's) to see what signals are
available.
Will
