Re: [cobalt-users] OT - Help interpreting TOP data

[flash22@xxxxxxx]

On Wed, 3 Oct 2001, Alonso Garcia wrote:

> Can some of the Linux experts out there help me interpret this top screen?
> specially the httpd <defunct> line?
> ...
>   PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT  LIB %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
> 14312 httpd      2   0     0    0     0 Z       0  0.5  0.0   0:00 httpd
> <defunct>

This is perfectly normal, ignore it ;) defunct processes (actually
'zombies' , note the 'Z' under STATus , are just programs that have quit,
but that the system hasn't removed from memory yet. It takes a little
while for the kernel to clean up after a program is done, during that
short interval they are 'defunct'. 
The only reason you see it with httpd so much is it's very active and
starts/quits it's sub processes fairly often, but if you watch closely,
you will probably see other things doing it occasionally.

(Zombies that hang around and won't go away are another matter however ;)

You look reasonably ok for memory, assuming your machine is as busy as
it's going to be when you did that top, if that's idle memory, you could
probably stand a touch more, you are a bit close for a heavy web
server...all depends what it is expected to do (You have a tiny bit
swapped, but not more than is reasonable)

Good: I see a sshd in there :)

gsh