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type="topic" style="task"
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id="process-status">
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<info>
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<revision pkgversion="3.11" date="2014-01-28" status="complete"/>
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<link type="guide" xref="index#processes-info" group="processes-info" />
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<link type="seealso" xref="process-kill" />
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<link type="seealso" xref="cpu-check" />
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<include href="legal.xml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"/>
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<credit type="author copyright">
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<name>Phil Bull</name>
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<email>philbull@gmail.com</email>
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<years>2014</years>
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</credit>
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<desc>The status of a process can be running, sleeping, stopped, or zombie.</desc>
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</info>
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<title>What do the process statuses mean?</title>
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The status of a process tells you whether it is currently doing something or not. There are four statuses that a process can have:
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<terms>
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<item>
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<title>Running</title>
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Processes that are currently doing something (for example, a web
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browser loading a web page). Running processes are those that are
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actively using the processor (CPU).
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</item>
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<item>
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<title>Sleeping</title>
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Processes that are not currently doing anything (for example, because
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they are waiting for something to happen). They don't use any of the
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processor's time, but still take up memory. If they need to do something,
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they will "wake up" and change their status to running.
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</item>
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<item>
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<title>Stopped</title>
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A stopped process is one that has been put to sleep manually.
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You might want to stop a process temporarily if it is using too much
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processing time, for example.
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To do this, click the process in the <gui>Processes</gui> tab, then
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right-click it and select <gui>Stop</gui> from the menu that appears. You
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can wake it up again by clicking <gui>Continue</gui> on the same
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menu.
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</item>
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<item>
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<title>Zombie</title>
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A zombie process is one that has finished running and will never start
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again, but is being kept in the list of processes for some reason. This
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usually happens because it was started by another program that needs to
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know if it finished successfully or not, but which has not checked on the
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process yet.
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Zombie processes do not use any memory or processing time, and will
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eventually go away. You do not need to do anything to get rid of them.
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</item>
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</terms>
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The majority of processes will either be running or sleeping.
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</page>
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