procps-ng

procps-ng
Name	procps-ng
Developer	Stephane Graber; Red Hat; Debian; Ubuntu
Initial release	1990s
Operating system	Linux
License	GNU General Public License
Repository	Git

procps-ng

procps-ng is a suite of system utilities for the Linux operating system providing tools to monitor and manage processes, system resources, and kernel interfaces. It originated from earlier procps efforts and is widely packaged by distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux while being used in environments running kernels from projects like the Linux kernel maintained by Linus Torvalds. The suite includes tools familiar to administrators and developers working with systemd, BusyBox, and other init systems.

Overview

procps-ng supplies command-line programs that interact with the /proc virtual filesystem exposed by the Linux kernel, enabling inspection and control of running processes, memory usage, and system load. Common utilities in the suite appear alongside programs from projects such as GNU Coreutils and util-linux within distributions like Fedora and Arch Linux. Because many system utilities depend on its outputs, procps-ng occupies a central role in server management, embedded systems used by companies like Intel and ARM Holdings, and cloud platforms provided by vendors such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform.

History and Development

The lineage of procps-ng traces back to the procps package first developed in the 1990s to expose procfs information to users of the Linux kernel. Over time, maintenance shifted through different maintainers and organizations; notable contributors include developers associated with Red Hat and community members from distributions like Debian and Gentoo. The "ng" (next generation) fork occurred as part of modernizing code, adopting practices from projects using Git for version control and continuous integration patterns popularized by projects hosted on platforms like GitHub and GitLab. procps-ng development reflects collaboration models similar to those used by large open-source initiatives such as the Linux Foundation and the Free Software Foundation.

Components and Utilities

The suite bundles multiple userland utilities that system administrators and developers commonly use:

- top, htop alternatives, and related monitoring tools that complement dashboards found in Grafana and Prometheus deployments. - ps, a process snapshot utility often used in scripting across environments managed by Ansible and Puppet. - free and vmstat, which report memory and virtual memory statistics useful when diagnosing performance in stacks involving Nginx, Apache HTTP Server, or MySQL. - kill, pkill, and skill variants that send signals to processes, used in orchestration with systems like Kubernetes and container runtimes such as Docker. - sysctl helpers that read and write kernel parameters akin to configuration managed in distributions like OpenSUSE and CentOS.

These utilities were designed to interoperate with other packages such as libc, the GNU Compiler Collection, and logging systems including rsyslog and systemd-journald.

Features and Functionality

procps-ng tools provide functionalities including real-time process monitoring, formatted process listings, signal dispatch, and memory statistics. The utilities rely on procfs interfaces implemented by the Linux kernel and provide outputs consumable by automation frameworks like Jenkins and SaltStack. Features such as sorting, filtering, and column customization in tools like ps facilitate integration with monitoring suites such as Nagios and Zabbix. procps-ng also supports localization efforts coordinated with projects like gettext and testing workflows using frameworks such as Autotools and CUnit.

Usage and Configuration

Administrators typically invoke procps-ng commands directly on shells provided by environments such as Bash or Zsh on machines managed via orchestration from Terraform or configuration management by Chef. Command-line options enable tailored reporting (for example, selecting PID namespaces relevant in LXC or systemd-nspawn containers). Configuration of procps-ng utilities generally follows distribution policy maintained by package teams at Debian and Ubuntu; some tools accept environment variables and runtime flags, while others rely on kernel tunables manipulated via sysctl administered by OpenRC or systemd scripts.

Packaging and Distribution

procps-ng is packaged by many Linux distributions, with source and binary packages available in repositories for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Arch Linux, and Gentoo. Upstream development typically occurs in a Git repository and releases are synchronized with distribution maintainers and continuous integration systems used by projects like OBS (Open Build Service). Packaging responsibilities include compliance with licensing overseen by organizations such as the Free Software Foundation Europe and security CVE mitigation coordinated through channels like Mitre and distribution security teams in Red Hat and Debian Security.

Category:Linux software