[asterisk-users] Reducing number of Asterisk processes?

[Tilghman Lesher]

On Saturday 29 January 2011 04:52:02 Gilles wrote:
> Hello
> 
> On a uClinux-based appliance, "ps aux" shows multiple Asterisk
> processes:
> 
>   380 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   381 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   383 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   384 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   385 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   386 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   387 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   388 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   389 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   390 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   391 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   392 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   393 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   394 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   395 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   396 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   397 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   398 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   399 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   400 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
>   401 root      11990 S   asterisk -f
> 
> I was wondering...
> 1. Why have more than one?
> 2. Provided each process is indeed using 11.990 bytes, is it possible
> to reduce the number of concurrent processes, considering the fact
> that this appliance will not handle more than a couple of concurrent
> calls?

1.  uClinux has no fork(2) call, only a vfork(2) call.  Therefore, these
amount to multiple processes sharing the same address space.  In fact,
it's very likely that these are multiple threads, not processes at all.
2.  The unit is in kilobytes.  These "processes" take up 12 MB, not 12KB.
3.  Your questions are probably more appropriate to the uClinux mailing
lists.  They should, at the very least, be able to more completely answer
your queries about the behavior of non-Asterisk system utilities.

-- 
Tilghman