Activity Monitor, Processes called "find (1214)" and "sh (1211)ed

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Activity Monitor, Processes called "find (1214)" and "sh (1211)ed

I was sitting at my G5 doing nothing in particular but noting a lot of disk chatter so I opened up Activity Monitor and noticed a process call 'find' at the top of the list. When I checked on it the user was listed as 'nobody (-2)' and the parent was 'sh (1211)'. Any ideas on what this might be? thanks...

Powermac G5 Dual 2ghz, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Apr 27, 2008 8:09 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 27, 2008 8:28 AM in response to Phil Waters

Sounds like it could be one of the daily/weekly/monthly jobs run automatically. Open up your Console application from the Utilities folder and click on the disclosure triangle next to the line that says "/var/log" in the list on the left. Look for the logs called "daily.out", "weekly.out", and "monthly.out". They all have a date at the beginning of each entry for when they ran. See if that happened about the same time you saw the processes in Activity Monitor.

charlie

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Answer 2

Kappy

Level 10

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Apr 27, 2008 8:42 AM in response to Phil Waters

It's an updating of the local search database used by Spotlight. "Sh" is the "shell" process of Unix.

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Answer 3

Phil Waters Author

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70 points

Apr 27, 2008 8:48 AM in response to Charles Minow

Thanks, looks like "daily.out" and "weekly.out" were running. The thing that spooked me most was the "nobody (-2) user listing.

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Answer 4

Phil Waters Author

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70 points

Apr 27, 2008 8:49 AM in response to Kappy

I usually see a little dot in the menu bar icon when this is working. In this case there was none as it was the first place I look when things are chatty. Thanks for the input.

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Answer 5

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Apr 27, 2008 9:09 AM in response to Phil Waters

That is when Spotlight is re-indexing. There is another local search database used by "find". It is updated separately by the maintenance scripts.

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Answer 6

Apr 27, 2008 9:40 AM in response to Phil Waters

Phil Waters wrote:
The thing that spooked me most was the "nobody (-2) user listing.

The "nobody" user is a default user on the OS X system used by the OS for some tasks.

There are quite a few different "users" on your system, not just the ones ou created. They're either there for specific programs, like the "postfix" and "mysql" users, or for various tasks, like the "nobody" user, which is running a process called "usbmuxd" on my MBP right now. "usbmuxd" looks to be something to do with iPods (it's part of a "MobileDevice" framework, anyway). User "nobody" also will run other services, as Kappy said...

charlie

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