Support - ask in our friendly forums.
| You are here: SillyDog701 > UNIX Guide >SillyDog701 > UNIX Guide > Concepts > | Support - ask in our friendly forums. |
When you enter a command it invokes a program. While this program is running it is called a process. It is important to grasp that although there is only one copy of a program held in the file system, any number of processes can be invoked which run this program.
When the operating system is started after a boot, a single process is started. This process is the parent of all subsequent processes. Each process created on the system has a unique number, known as its PID, associated with it.
When you login to the system a process is started to run your shell program. Any processes that are started from within your shell - such as entering a command - are the children of this process. A process can have many children, but only one parent.
See Managing jobs and processes for further information.
![[Home]](http://sillydog.org/unix/pix/weetop.gif)
UNIX Guide home |
![[Search]](http://sillydog.org/unix/pix/weesearch.gif)
search |
index
| Page URL: http://sillydog.org/unix/ [SillyDog701] [Netscape] [MozInfo701] [MacCentre701] [UNIX Guide] [AntTunes701][Forums] [Search] [Change Log] [Feedback] [About Us] [Sitemap] This UNIX Guide maintained by SillyDog701, portion of this Guide is based on UNIXhelp. UNIXhelp is copyright University of Edinburgh. This page was last modified on 14 March, 2006 |
  support MozInfo701 and SillyDog701 |