Title: Problem Set 2 Answers Author: Justin Washington, Xinxhuo Dong
root 302 0.0 0.1 3256 784 ? Ss 09:01 0:00 /sbin/udevd --daemon root 504 0.0 0.0 3252 376 ? S 09:01 0:00 /sbin/udevd --daemon root 514 0.0 0.0 3252 352 ? S 09:01 0:00 /sbin/udevd --daemon
On ubuntu, there is a process run by root named udevd that seems to need three processes. Upon further investigation, I found that udev is a device manager for the linux kernel that handles adding and removing devices and loading firmware. udevd is a background process that manages the virtual /dev directory. A new process is added for each device added.
In top, typing O and choosing the column you want to sort can allow you to sort by priority. I noticed that a process named ksmd always had the highest priority, no matter what other applications I opened. Through further investigation, I found that ksmd is Kernel SamePae Merging, a background service that scans page addresses to find duplicate pages and merges them to reduce memory usage.