Here's a preview from my zine, Bite Size Linux!! If you want to see more comics like this, sign up for my saturday comics newsletter or browse more comics!
get the zine!
read the transcript!
what’s in a process?
PID
process: process #129 reporting for duty!
USER and GROUP
from offscreen: who are you running as?
process: julia!
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
like PATH! you can set them with
$ env A=val./program
SIGNAL HANDLERS
process 1: I ignore SIGTERM!
process 2: I shut down safely!
WORKING DIRECTORY
Relative paths (./blah) are relative to the working directory! chdir changes it.
PARENT PID
PID 129 -> PID 147 -> PID 1 (init) is everyone’s ancestor
COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS
see them in /proc/PID/cmdline
OPEN FILES
very open file has an offset.
process: I’ve read 8000 bytes of that one
MEMORY
heap! stack! shared libraries! the program’s binary! mmaped files!
THREADS
sometimes one
sometimes LOTS
CAPABILITIES
process 1: I have CAP_PTRACE
process 2: well I have CAP_SYS_ADMIN
NAMESPACES
process: I’m in the host network namespace
container process: I have my own namespace!