tseeling

I always cringe when I see shell code like this > cat /etc/passwd | cut -f1 -d:

Usually this comes as > ps -ef | grep something | grep -v grep | grep -v $myownpid

why not use one simple and concise awk statement which does it all in one go?

awk -F: '{print$1}' /etc/passwd ps -ef | awk '/[h]ttpd/{print$2}'

But apart from that: very nice summary of things to consider and the sequence for analysis.