ps(1) ps(1)
NAME
ps - report process status
SYNOPSIS
ps [options]
DESCRIPTION
The ps command prints information about active processes and
lightweight processes, or LWPs. Without options, ps prints
information about processes associated with the controlling
terminal. The output contains only the process ID, terminal
identifier, cumulative execution time, and the command name.
Otherwise, the information that is displayed is controlled by
the options.
Some options accept lists as arguments. Items in a list can
be either separated by commas or else enclosed in double
quotes and separated by commas or spaces. Values for proclist
and grplist must be numeric.
The options are:
-e Print information about every process now running.
-d Print information about all processes except
session leaders.
-a Print information about all processes most
frequently requested: all those except session
leaders and processes not associated with a
terminal.
-j Print session ID and process group ID.
-f Generate a full listing. (See below for
significance of columns in a full listing.)
-l Generate a long listing. (See below.)
-L Print status of active LWPs within a process.
-P Print the processor number on which an LWP is
running when the LWP has been explicitly bound by
a user.
-y Must be combined with -l option. Changes the long
listing: prints the RSS and SZ fields in kilobytes
and does not print the F and ADDR fields.
-c Print information in a format that reflects
scheduler properties as described in priocntl(1).
The -c option affects the output of the -f and -l
options, as described below.
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ps(1) ps(1)
-t termlist List only process data associated with the
terminal given in termlist. Terminal identifiers
may be specified in one of two forms: the device's
file name (for example, term/04) or, if the
device's file name starts with term, just the
digit identifier (for example, 04).
-p proclist List only process data whose process ID numbers
are given in proclist.
-u uidlist List only process data whose user ID number or
login name is given in uidlist. In the listing,
the numerical user ID will be printed unless you
give the -f option, which prints the login name.
-g grplist List only process data whose group leader's ID
number(s) appears in grplist. (A group leader is
a process whose process ID number is identical to
its process group ID number.
-s sesslist List information on all session leaders whose IDs
appear in sesslist.
Under the -f option, ps tries to determine the command name
and arguments given when the process was created by examining
the user block. Failing this, the command name is printed, as
it would have appeared without the -f option, in square
brackets.
The column headings and the meaning of the columns in a ps
listing are given below; the letters f and l identify the
option (full or long, respectively) that causes the
corresponding heading to appear; all means that the heading
always appears.
Note that these two options determine only what information is
provided for a process; they do not determine which processes
will be listed.
F (l) Flags (hexadecimal and additive) associated
with the process, or the LWP if the -L option
is specified.
00 Process has terminated: process table
entry now available.
01 A system process: always in primary
memory.
02 Parent is tracing process.
04 Tracing parent's signal has stopped
process: parent is waiting
[ptrace(2)].
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ps(1) ps(1)
08 Process is currently in primary
memory.
10 Process currently in primary memory:
locked until an event completes.
20 Process cannot be swapped.
S (l) The state of the process, or the LWP if the -L
option is specified:
O Process is running on a processor.
S Sleeping: process is waiting for an
event to complete.
R Runnable: process is on run queue.
I Idle: process is being created.
Z Zombie state: process terminated and
parent not waiting.
T Traced: process stopped by a signal
because parent is tracing it.
X SXBRK state: process is waiting for
more primary memory.
UID (f,l) The user ID number of the process owner of
the LWP (the login name is printed under the
-f option).
PID (all) The process ID of the LWP (This information
is necessary to kill a process). When a
process is multithreaded, a pid appears for
each active process.
PPID (f,l) The process ID of the parent process.
CLS (f,l) Scheduling class for the process, or the LWP
when the -L option is specified. Printed
only when the -c option is used.
PRI (l) The priority of the process, or the LWP when
the -L option is specified. Without the -c
option, higher numbers mean lower priority.
With the -c option, higher numbers mean
higher priority.
ADDR (l) The memory address of the process.
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ps(1) ps(1)
SZ (l) The size (in pages or clicks) of the virtual
address space of the process. When the -y
option is specified, the size is in
kilobytes.
WCHAN (l) The address of an event for which the process
is sleeping or in SXBRK state; if blank, the
process is running. For an individual LWP if
-L is specified.
STIME (f) The starting time of the process, given in
hours, minutes, and seconds. (A process
begun more than twenty-four hours before the
ps inquiry is executed is given in months and
days.)
LTIME The execution time for an individual LWP.
TTY (all) The controlling terminal for the process (the
message, ?, is printed when there is no
controlling terminal).
TIME (all) The cumulative execution time for the
process.
COMD (all) The command name (the full command name and
its arguments are printed under the -f
option).
NLWP The number of LWPs in the process.
PSR The processor id of the processor on which
the LWP is running when the user has
explicitly bound the LWP to a particular
processor. When a ``-'' is listed, the LWP
has not been explicitly bound, but is
executing on a scheduler-assigned processor.
RSS Stable resident set size in kilobytes.
A process that has exited and has a parent, but has not yet
been waited for by the parent, is marked <defunct>.
Files
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ps(1) ps(1)
/dev
/dev/sxt/*
/dev/term/*
/dev/xt/* terminal (``tty'') names searcher files
/proc/* process information
/etc/passwd UID information supplier
/etc/ps_data internal data structure
/usr/lib/locale/locale/LC_MESSAGES/uxcore
language-specific message file [See LANG on
environ(5).]
REFERENCES
getty(1M), kill(1), nice(1), priocntl(1)
NOTICES
Things can change while ps is running; the snap-shot it gives
is true only for a split-second, and it may not be accurate by
the time you see it. Some data printed for defunct processes
is irrelevant.
If no termlist, proclist, uidlist, or grplist is specified, ps
checks stdin, stdout, and stderr in that sequence, looking for
the controlling terminal and attempts to report on processes
associated with the controlling terminal. In this case, if
stdin, stdout, and stderr are all redirected, ps will not find
a controlling terminal, so there will be no report.
ps -ef may not report the start of a tty login session, but
rather an earlier time, when a getty was last respawned on the
tty line.
The -y option has no effect unless combined with the -l
option. It is identical to the -x option in System V Release
4 MP.
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