why 3 processes?

[Nick Taylor]

Howdy:

New guy to MySql and just installed 3.23 to my redhat 6.2 server.  Was
wondering why I get 3 processes started for mysqld.

[nick@Dell1 nick]$ ps -ax | grep my
  615 ?        S      0:00 sh
/usr/bin/safe_mysqld --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --pi
  646 ?        S      0:00
/usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/ --datadir=/var/lib/mysql
  670 ?        S      0:00
/usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/ --datadir=/var/lib/mysql
  671 ?        S      0:00
/usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/ --datadir=/var/lib/mysql

Thanks

Nick Taylor