RHEL Linux - Red Hat System Administration Practice Exam

Which program provides a dynamic view of the system's processes, displaying a summary header followed by a process or thread list?

1. proc

2. tree

3. top

4. jobs

The correct answer is: top

The program that provides a dynamic view of the system's processes is known as "top." This command-line utility is widely used in Linux environments to monitor system performance in real-time. When you run "top," it displays a summary that includes system uptime, CPU usage, memory consumption, and load averages. Below this summary header, it lists all running processes and threads, providing live updates on their state, resource utilization, and PID (process ID). Users can sort and manage processes directly within the interface, making it a powerful tool for system administration and troubleshooting. In contrast, the other options serve different purposes. The "proc" filesystem is used to access information about system processes in a hierarchical file format, but it does not provide a dynamic interface. The "tree" command visualizes directory structures in a tree-like format, which is useful for understanding filesystem hierarchy but does not relate to process monitoring. "Jobs," on the other hand, is a shell builtin that displays background and stopped jobs in the current shell session, but it does not provide a comprehensive view of all system processes.