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cd ..
System

Process Management Essentials

Monitor, kill, and manage Linux processes with ps, top, htop, and kill.

2025-08-25
linux, processes, monitoring

List all running processes

ps aux

Find process by name

ps aux | grep nginx

Or use pgrep:

pgrep -a nginx

Kill process by PID

kill 1234

Force kill process

kill -9 1234

Kill all processes by name

pkill nginx

Interactive process viewer

top

Press q to quit, k to kill a process, M to sort by memory.

Better alternative: htop

htop

Check CPU and memory usage

top -bn1 | head -20

List processes using a specific port

lsof -i :8080

Background a running process

Ctrl+Z to suspend, then:

bg

Bring background process to foreground

fg

Run command in background

nohup ./long_script.sh &

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