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proccount

proccount

Name

proccount -- Reports on the total number of processes.

Description

The proccount module checks the total number of running processes in any state. This module is similar to cpustat and memstat in that it reports on global statistics on the system. If you want to do checks on specific processes or groups of processes, please refer to the procinfo module.

On Linux and Solaris, information is gathered through the contents of the "/proc" directory. Typically a directory is created within /proc for each process running on the system, by creating a directory of its PID.

Windows 2000/XP/2003 uses the Performance Data Helper to gather the process count. Windows 9x/NT uses the toolhelp functions to create a process snapshot.

Configuration

Proccount requires no additional configuration.

Thresholds

Thresholds are quite simple with proccount. You may match "count" against any number, using any of the basic logical operators are allowed (==, !=, <, >, <=, >=). Here are some examples:

# Example thresholds for proccount
thresh1.threshold = ProcCount.count > 100
thresh2.threshold = ProcCount.count <= 20
		

History Data

The proccount module will save each process count. This data, using the RSP History Viewer or RSP Web tools, can be used to show trends in process count over time.