Proc::ProcessTable, version .04

STATUS
======
This is ALPHA software; use at your own risk. Currently known to work
on linux. 

This version also contains preliminary pre-alpha support for solaris
that I cobbled together from some really old code and perusal of the
solaris man pages I got off the web. I don't have access to a solaris
box at the moment, so the chances that this will work right are less
than slim. The only thing I have been able to check it for is syntax
with gcc. Comments, bug reports and patches are greatly appreciated.

DESCRIPTION
===========
This module is a first crack at providing a consistent interface to
Unix (and maybe other multitasking OS's) process table information.
The impetus for this came about with my frustration at having to parse
the output of various systems' ps commands to check whether specific
processes were running on different boxes at a larged mixed Unix site.
The output format of ps was different on each OS, and sometimes
changed with each new release of an OS. Also, running a ps subprocess
from within a perl or shell script and parsing the output was not a
very efficient or aesthetic way to do things.

With this module, you can do things like this:

	# kill memory pigs 
	use Proc::ProcessTable;

	$t = new Proc::ProcessTable;
        foreach $p ( @{$t->table} ){	
	  if( $p->pctmem > 95 ){
	    $p->kill(9);
          }		
        }

INSTALLATION
============
This module needs the File::Find and Storable modules in order to
work. File::Find is generally included with perl distributions;
Storable is available from CPAN. 

After unpacking the tar file, do:

        perl Makefile.PL 
        make
	make test
        make install

There is embedded POD documentation in ProcessTable.pm and
Process/Process.pm.

SUPPORTED OPERATING SYSTEMS
===========================
At the moment, this module only works on Linux (specifically, Redhat
5.0 for Intel, which is all I have access to right now, but hopefully
it will work on other Linuxes). Please see the file PORTING if you are
interested in making it work on something else.

COPYRIGHT
=========
Copyright (c) 1998, Daniel J. Urist. All rights reserved.  This
package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.


--
Daniel J. Urist
durist@world.std.com
