What is this?

[Gray_Race]

I was just using my computer as I usully do, when for no apperent reason my processer and disk ussage spike. So I ran ps -A and top to see what was cassing it and I found the fallowing thigns running and caussing the ussage. What are these programs? Secondly, what could have caused them to start? I run MDK 8.


1490 ? 00:00:00 run-parts
1494 ? 00:00:00 makewhatis.cron
1496 ? 00:00:00 makewhatis
2584 ? 00:00:00 find
2585 ? 00:00:01 gawk
2726 ? 00:00:00 bzcat

[bdg1983]

Those are being run by cron and they are all related.

I guess a database of whatis is being built/refreshed, find to find what is required, gawk for parsing and bzcat to compress the new database.

Make sense?

[Gray_Race]

Thanks mdwalls.

But what exactly is Cron? What does it do? And do I need it?

[saeed_contractor]

cron is simialr to windows system schedular. It allows you to automate processes and schedule tasks. To find out what is in cron use "crontab -l" that should display it.