Managing and Troubleshooting System Services and Processes

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Managing and Troubleshooting System Services and Processes

In this hands-on lab, you will be investigating process activity and managing services on a development system. You use the `ps` and `top` commands to review process activity and locate the `PID` for a specific process. You will use this information to kill an active process that shouldn't be running. To ensure the process isn't restarted by the service, you will use the `systemctl` command to mask the service so it doesn't start automatically and cannot be manually started by an administrator. *This course is not approved or sponsored by Red Hat.*

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Lab Info

Level

Beginner

Last updated

Sep 20, 2025

Duration

30m

Challenge

View Process Information Using the PS and TOP Commands
- Use top to view process activity.
- Use grep to filter ps output for mariadb.
Challenge

Cycle the Problematic Service
- Use the systemctl command to cycle the mariadb.
- Confirm mariadb service is running using the systemctl command.
Challenge

Identify the PID and KILL the Problematic Process
- Use the ps command to identify the PID for the mariadb process.
- Use the kill command to terminate the mariadb using the SIGKILL parameter.
Challenge

Stop and Mask the Problematic Service to Prevent It from Restarting
- Check the mariadb service status using systemctl.
- Use systemctlto stop the mariadb service.
- Mask the mariadb service using systemctl.
- Attempt to start the mariadb service to confirm it is properly masked.

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