PS

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The information displayed is selected based on a set of keywords (see the -L -O and -o options). The default output format includes, for each process, the process' ID controlling terminal, cpu time (including both user and system time), state, and associated command.

The process file system (see procfs(5) ) should be mounted when \&ps is executed, otherwise not all information will be available.

The options are as follows:

-a

Display information about other users' processes as well as your own.

-c

Change the ``command'' column output to just contain the executable name, rather than the full command line.

-C

Change the way the cpu percentage is calculated by using a ``raw'' cpu calculation that ignores ``resident'' time (this normally has no effect).

-e

Display the environment as well.

-h

Repeat the information header as often as necessary to guarantee one header per page of information.

-j

Print information associated with the following keywords: user, pid, ppid, pgid, sess, jobc, state, tt, time and command.

-L

List the set of available keywords.

-l

Display information associated with the following keywords: uid, pid, ppid, cpu, pri, nice, vsz, rss, wchan, state, tt, time and command.

-M

Extract values associated with the name list from the specified core instead of the default ``/dev/kmem ''

-m

Sort by memory usage, instead of by process ID

-N

Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the default ``/kernel ''

-O

Add the information associated with the space or comma separated list of keywords specified, after the process ID in the default information display. Keywords may be appended with an equals (``='') sign and a string. This causes the printed header to use the specified string instead of the standard header.

-o

Display information associated with the space or comma separated list of keywords specified. Keywords may be appended with an equals (``='') sign and a string. This causes the printed header to use the specified string instead of the standard header.

-p

Display information associated with the specified process ID

-r

Sort by current cpu usage, instead of by process ID

-S

Change the way the process time is calculated by summing all exited children to their parent process.

-T

Display information about processes attached to the device associated with the standard input.

-t

Display information about processes attached to the specified terminal device.

-U

Display the processes belonging to the specified username

-u

Display information associated with the following keywords: user, pid, %cpu, %mem, vsz, rss, tt, state, start, time and command. The -u option implies the -r option.

-v

Display information associated with the following keywords: pid, state, time, sl, re, pagein, vsz, rss, lim, tsiz, %cpu, %mem and command. The -v option implies the -m option.

-W

Extract swap information from the specified file instead of the default ``/dev/drum ''

-w

Use 132 columns to display information, instead of the default which is your window size. If the -w option is specified more than once, ps will use as many columns as necessary without regard for your window size.

-x

Display information about processes without controlling terminals.

A complete list of the available keywords are listed below. Some of these keywords are further specified as follows:

%cpu

The cpu utilization of the process; this is a decaying average over up to a minute of previous (real) time. Since the time base over which this is computed varies (since processes may be very young) it is possible for the sum of all %CPU fields to exceed 100%.

%mem

The percentage of real memory used by this process.

flags

The flags associated with the process as in the include file Aq Pa sys/proc.h :

P_ADVLOCK Ta 0x00001   Process may hold a POSIX advisory lock

P_CONTROLT Ta 0x00002    Has a controlling terminal

P_INMEM Ta 0x00004Loaded into memory

P_NOCLDSTOP Ta 0x00008SIGCHLD when children stop

P_PPWAIT Ta 0x00010Parent is waiting for child to exec/exit

P_PROFIL Ta 0x00020Has started profiling

P_SELECT Ta 0x00040Selecting; wakeup/waiting danger

P_SINTR Ta 0x00080Sleep is interruptible

P_SUGID Ta 0x00100Had set id privileges since last exec

P_SYSTEM Ta 0x00200System proc: no sigs, stats or swapping

P_TIMEOUT Ta 0x00400Timing out during sleep

P_TRACED Ta 0x00800Debugged process being traced

P_WAITED Ta 0x01000Debugging process has waited for child

P_WEXIT Ta 0x02000Working on exiting

P_EXEC Ta 0x04000Process called exec

P_NOSWAP Ta 0x08000Another flag to prevent swap out

P_PHYSIO Ta 0x10000Doing physical I/O

P_OWEUPC Ta 0x20000Owe process an addupc() call at next ast

P_SWAPPING Ta 0x40000Process is being swapped

lim

The soft limit on memory used, specified via a call to
setrlimit(2).

lstart

The exact time the command started, using the ``%c'' format described in strftime(3).

nice

The process scheduling increment (see setpriority(2)).

rss

the real memory (resident set) size of the process (in 1024 byte units).

start

The time the command started. If the command started less than 24 hours ago, the start time is displayed using the ``%l:ps.1p'' format described in strftime(3). If the command started less than 7 days ago, the start time is displayed using the ``%a6.15p'' format. Otherwise, the start time is displayed using the ``%e%b%y'' format.

state

The state is given by a sequence of letters, for example, ``RWNA '' The first letter indicates the run state of the process:

D

Marks a process in disk (or other short term, uninterruptible) wait.

I

Marks a process that is idle (sleeping for longer than about 20 seconds).

R

Marks a runnable process.

S

Marks a process that is sleeping for less than about 20 seconds.

T

Marks a stopped process.

Z

Marks a dead process (a ``zombie'').

Additional characters after these, if any, indicate additional state information:

+

The process is in the foreground process group of its control terminal.

<

The process has raised CPU scheduling priority.

>

The process has specified a soft limit on memory requirements and is currently exceeding that limit; such a process is (necessarily) not swapped.

A

the process has asked for random page replacement ( VA_ANOM from vadvise(2), for example, lisp(1) in a garbage collect).

E

The process is trying to exit.

L

The process has pages locked in core (for example, for raw I/O )

N

The process has reduced CPU scheduling priority (see setpriority(2)).

S

The process has asked for FIFO page replacement ( VA_SEQL from vadvise(2), for example, a large image processing program using virtual memory to sequentially address voluminous data).

s

The process is a session leader.

V

The process is suspended during a vfork.

W

The process is swapped out.

X

The process is being traced or debugged.

tt

An abbreviation for the pathname of the controlling terminal, if any. The abbreviation consists of the two letters following ``/dev/tty '' or, for the console, ``co''. This is followed by a ``-'' if the process can no longer reach that controlling terminal (i.e., it has been revoked).

wchan

The event (an address in the system) on which a process waits. When printed numerically, the initial part of the address is trimmed off and the result is printed in hex, for example, 0x80324000 prints as 324000.

When printing using the command keyword, a process that has exited and has a parent that has not yet waited for the process (in other words, a zombie) is listed as ``<defunct>'', and a process which is blocked while trying to exit is listed as ``<exiting>''. Ps makes an educated guess as to the file name and arguments given when the process was created by examining memory or the swap area. The method is inherently somewhat unreliable and in any event a process is entitled to destroy this information, so the names cannot be depended on too much. The ucomm (accounting) keyword can, however, be depended on.  

KEYWORDS

%cpu

percentage cpu usage (alias pcpu)

%mem

percentage memory usage (alias pmem)

acflag

accounting flag (alias acflg)

command

command and arguments

cpu

short-term cpu usage factor (for scheduling)

flags

the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias f)

inblk

total blocks read (alias inblock)

jobc

job control count

ktrace

tracing flags

ktracep

tracing vnode

lim

memoryuse limit

logname

login name of user who started the process

lstart

time started

majflt

total page faults

minflt

total page reclaims

msgrcv

total messages received (reads from pipes/sockets)

msgsnd

total messages sent (writes on pipes/sockets)

nice

nice value (alias ni)

nivcsw

total involuntary context switches

nsigs

total signals taken (alias nsignals)

nswap

total swaps in/out

nvcsw

total voluntary context switches

nwchan

wait channel (as an address)

oublk

total blocks written (alias oublock)

p_ru

resource usage (valid only for zombie)

paddr

swap address

pagein

pageins (same as majflt)

pgid

process group number

pid

process ID

poip

pageouts in progress

ppid

parent process ID

pri

scheduling priority

re

core residency time (in seconds; 127 = infinity)

rgid

real group ID

rlink

reverse link on run queue, or 0

rss

resident set size

rsz

resident set size + (text size / text use count) (alias rssize)

rtprio

realtime priority (101 = not a realtime process)

ruid

real user ID

ruser

user name (from ruid)

sess

session pointer

sig

pending signals (alias pending)

sigcatch

caught signals (alias caught)

sigignore

ignored signals (alias ignored)

sigmask

blocked signals (alias blocked)

sl

sleep time (in seconds; 127 = infinity)

start

time started

state

symbolic process state (alias stat)

svgid

saved gid from a setgid executable

svuid

saved uid from a setuid executable

tdev

control terminal device number

time

accumulated cpu time, user + system (alias cputime)

tpgid

control terminal process group ID

tsess

control terminal session pointer

tsiz

text size (in Kbytes)

tt

control terminal name (two letter abbreviation)

tty

full name of control terminal

uprocp

process pointer

ucomm

name to be used for accounting

uid

effective user ID

upr

scheduling priority on return from system call (alias usrpri)

user

user name (from uid)

vsz

virtual size in Kbytes (alias vsize)

wchan

wait channel (as a symbolic name)

xstat

exit or stop status (valid only for stopped or zombie process)

FILES

/dev

special files and device names

/dev/drum

default swap device

/dev/kmem

default kernel memory

/var/run/dev.db

/dev name database

/var/db/kvm_kernel.db

system namelist database

/kernel

default system namelist

/proc

the mount point of procfs(5)

SEE ALSO

BUGS

Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

KEYWORDS

FILES

SEE ALSO

BUGS