ps Command ps
Print process status
ps [ -afglmnrtwx ] [ -c sys ] [ -k mem ]
ps prints information about a process or processes. It prints
the information in fields, followed by the command name and ar-
guments. The fields include the following:
TTY The controlling terminal of the command, printed in short
form. ``44:'' means /dev/tty44 and ``??:'' means there
is no controlling terminal.
PID Process id; necessary to know when the process is to be
killed.
GROUP PID of the group leader of the process; the shell started
up when the user logs in.
PPID PID of the parent of the process; very often a shell.
UID User id or name of the owner.
K Size of the process in kilobytes.
F Process flag bits, as follows:
PFCORE 00001 Process is in core
PFLOCK 00002 Process is locked in core
PFSWIO 00004 Swap I/O in progress
PFSWAP 00010 Process is swapped out
PFWAIT 00020 Process is stopped (not waited)
PFSTOP 00040 Process is stopped (waited on)
PFTRAC 00100 Process is being traced
PFKERN 00200 Kernel process
PFAUXM 00400 Auxiliary segments in memory
PFDISP 01000 Dispatch at earliest convenience
PFNDMP 02000 Command mode forbids dump
PFWAKE 04000 Wakeup requested
S State of the process, as follows:
R Ready to run (waiting for CPU time)
S Stopped for other reasons (I/O completion, pause, etc.)
T Being traced by another process
W Waiting for an existent child
Z Zombie (dead, but parent not waiting)
EVENT The condition which the process is anticipating; not ap-
plicable if the process is ready to run.
CVAL SVAL IVAL RVAL
Scheduling information; bigger is better.
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ps Command ps
UTIME Time consumed while running in the program (in seconds).
STIME Time consumed while running in the system (in seconds).
Normally, ps displays the TTY and PID fields of each active
process started on the caller's terminal, as well as the command
name and arguments. The following flags can alter this behavior.
a Display information about processes started from all ter-
minals.
c The next argument sys gives the system executable image
(default: /coherent). The namelist is searched for table
addresses.
d Print information about status of loadable drivers.
f Blank fields have `-' place-holders. This enables field-
oriented commands like sort and awk to process the output.
g Print the group leader field GROUP if the l option is given.
l Long format. In addition to the TTY and PID fields, prints
the PPID, UID, K, F, S and EVENT fields.
k The next argument mem is the memory file (default:
/dev/mem).
m Print the scheduling fields CVAL, SVAL, IVAL and RVAL.
n Suppress the header line.
r Print the real size of the process, which includes the user
and auxiliary segments assigned to the process. Because the
user segment (usually 1 kilobyte) is shared by all processes
owned by that user, this may give a misleading total size
for all the user's processes.
t Print elapsed CPU time fields UTIME and STIME.
w Wide format output; print 132 columns instead of 80.
x Display processes which do not have a controlling terminal
(e.g. the swapper).
***** Files *****
/coherent -- Default system file
/dev/mem -- Default memory file
/dev/tty* -- List of terminal names
***** See Also *****
commands, kill, mem, size, wait
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ps Command ps
***** Notes *****
Each process can modify or destroy its command name and ar-
guments. The state of the system changes even as ps runs.
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