Php running twice (two processes), one of which under root

Hey there,

First off, I am a newbie but am putting a lot of heart at searching/learning/understanding. The DO Community has been a tremendous help so far :) Here’s a problem I can’t solve because I’m not sure where to start.

While reviewing the running processes on my droplet (Ubuntu), I noticed that two instances of php5-fpm are running, one under my expected www-data user, one under root.

First, I’d like to understand why this root instance is here. Second, although it’s eating up a tiny amount of memory, it’s still significant on my 512MB droplet.

My questions:

• is it normal, expected or usual?
• what steps can I take to identify what launches the extra php5, if it’s not desirable?

Precisions:

• I never SSH with root, always with my other account, using SU as necessary
• I have installed automysqlbackup, following this great tutorial (https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-backup-mysql-databases-on-an-ubuntu-vps) which sets up a cron, it can be relevant.