Charles Rathbone wrote:

Sometimes linux starts doing things on its own, without any command from me. The last time this happened I looked at top and for several minutes saw processes such as find, sort, sed and mandb at the top of the list.

Generally, what is going on when this happens, and what is the trigger that starts it?

I don't think this is anything to worry about. It is probably just cron running to update the 'locate' database. This is running at around midnight, yes? cron is a program that will run other programs at set times. One example of this, which you have seen, is to update the database used by the 'locate' command. It is also used for system maintenance tasks, such as log file rotation and the like. For more information on how this all works, see 'man cron' and 'man crontab'. Have fun... Chris -- __ _ -o)/ / (_)__ __ ____ __ Chris Reeves /\\ /__/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / ICQ# 22219005 _\_v __/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\ -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/