On Feb 20, 2004, at 4:43 AM, Jerry Yeager wrote: > Using ps by itself will not get you much in the way of info, try 'ps > -a' or 'ps -aj' or ... (without the 'quotes'.) > the -a and -j options tells ps to print more information. > > Type 'man ps' and you will be given a lot of info, several pages, hit > the space bar to go to the next page. There are lots of options there > to use.
Wow, Jerry, thanks. That gave me a whole lot of data that I have no idea how to interpret. Knowing *nothing* about Unix, firing up Terminal feels like swimming with sharks to me. I read through the 'man ps' instruction page and thought maybe I shouldn't be in such deep water without a life raft. > > To answer that almost - but still unasked question, you are using a > shell when you are running Terminal. A shell is a command line window > that allows you to talk to the operating system in a very personal and > meaningful manner (and some folks think ... smile) What is the difference between Terminal and Console? And what can I learn from those that I can't learn from Activity Monitor, which looks ever-so-much less dangerous? One listing in Activity Monitor that stands out is 'mDNSResponder'. It caught my eye because the User is 'nobody'. The user of everything else is either 'root' or 'alexwhitman'. I do have a guest account on this iMac (not logged on right now), and it doesn't look like AM picked up anything that might be going on in that account. > > p.s. From what you have listed, I can tell you that you were running > TSCH instead of BASH for your terminal shell, are you by chance > running 10.2? No, I'm running 10.3.2. Is that not right/weird/a problem? Can you recommend a starting place for a rank beginner to learn the basics of Unix? Many thanks, Alex > > On Feb 19, 2004, at 11:11 PM, Alex W. wrote: > >> >> On Jan 9, 2004, at 2:44 PM, Lee Larson wrote: >>> A quick test is to open a shell and type ps to see the processes that >>> are running in your session. If there's something running you don't >>> recognize, ask us here what it is. >>> >> Just for the sake of curiosity, I just tried to do this. I think I >> don't know what a "shell" is -- I opened Terminal, typed ps <return>, >> and this was the result: >> >> Last login: Thu Feb 19 22:53:36 on console >> Welcome to Darwin! >> [iMac:~] alexwhit% ps >> PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND >> 754 std S 0:00.04 -tcsh >> [iMac:~] alexwhit% >> >> I had closed all the obvious applications, but surely there must be >> stuff (Palm Desktop or Virex, perhaps?) going on in the background. >> >> Is a shell different from Terminal? >> >> Thanks, >> Alex Whitman >> >> >> >> | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will >> | be February 24. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. >> | This list's page is <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>. >> > > > > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will > | be February 24. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. > | This list's page is <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>. > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be February 24. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | This list's page is <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>.
