Proc::ProcessTable, version .08

STATUS
======
This is ALPHA software; use at your own risk. Currently works on
linux, solaris, aix, hpux and freebsd. Please see the "README.osname"
files for details on individual os implementations. Please see the
file PORTING if you are interested in making it work on something
else. Please see the file TODO for a list of issues that need to be
addressed. 

Comments, bug reports, patches and especially ports 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.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
================
Thanks to the many people who sent in patches to help get the solaris
version to build. Thanks especially to David Paquet for providing the
AIX port, to Mike Romberg for the HPUX port, and to Slaven Rezic for
the FREEBSD port.

COPYRIGHT
=========
Copyright (c) 1998, 1999 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
