This week, you'll be completing the second phase of the project by responding to additional questions that have been raised by Faster Computing. Members of the company have asked about process monitoring and management, which you'll learn more about this week.
Monitoring and Managing Processes
Your experience with Linux has taught you that it's not uncommon for systems to run for months or even years without a single reboot. You know that in Windows, whenever updates are installed—or if the system is "acting up"—a common troubleshooting tactic is to reboot. But in Linux, it's seldom necessary to reboot, and you have found that rebooting can cause issues in a production environment. With this in mind, it will be critical for Faster Computing to be able to monitor and manage processes. There are many tools available for this, such as Top, which shows an overview of the main running processes on a system.
Faster Computing will also need to understand how the logging process works in Linux. When there's a system problem or failure, the logs can lead to the source of the problem. Without logs, troubleshooting certain issues would be difficult or impossible.