NAME
ps
- process status
SYNOPSIS
ps
[-AaCcehjlmrSsTuvwx]
[-k key]
[-M core]
[-N system]
[-O fmt]
[-o fmt]
[-p pid]
[-t tty]
[-U username]
[-W swap]
ps
-L
DESCRIPTION
ps
displays a header line followed by lines containing information about
running processes.
By default, the display includes only processes that have
controlling terminals and are owned by your uid.
The default sort order of controlling terminal and
(among processes with the same controlling terminal) process
ID
may be changed using the
-k -,m,
or
-r
options.
The information displayed for each process
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 options are as follows:
- -A
-
Display information about all processes.
This is equivalent to
-a -x.
- -a
-
Display information about other users' processes as well as your own.
Note that this does not display information about processes
without controlling terminals.
- -C
-
Change the way the CPU percentage is calculated by using a
``raw''
CPU calculation that ignores
``resident''
time (this normally has no effect).
- -c
-
Do not display full command with arguments, but only the
executable name.
This may be somewhat confusing; for example, all
sh(1)
scripts will show as
``sh''.
- -e
-
Display the environment as well.
The environment for other
users' processes can only be displayed by the super-user.
- -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.
- -k
-
Sort the output using the space or comma separated list of keywords.
Multiple sort keys may be specified, using any of the
-k -,m,
or
-r
options.
The default sort order is equivalent to
-k tdev,pid.
- -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 from the specified core file instead of the running system.
- -m
-
Sort by memory usage,
equivalent to
-k vsz.
- -N
-
Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the default
``
/netbsd
''.
Ignored unless
-M
is specified.
- -O
-
Display information associated with the space or comma separated list
of keywords specified.
The
-O
option does not suppress the default display;
it inserts additional keywords just after the
pid
keyword in the default display, or after the
pid
keyword (if any) in a non-default display specified before the
first use of the
-O
flag.
Keywords inserted by multiple
-O
options will be adjacent.
An equals sign
(``='')
followed by a customised header string may be appended to a keyword,
as described in more detail under the
-o
option.
- -o
-
Display information associated with the space or comma separated list
of keywords specified.
Use of the
-o
option suppresses the set of keywords that would be displayed by default,
or appends to the set of keywords specified by other options.
An equals sign
(``='')
followed by a customised header string may be appended to a keyword.
This causes the printed header to use the specified string instead of
the default header associated with the keyword.
Everything after the first equals sign is part of the customised
header text, and this may include embedded spaces
(``''),
commas
(``,''),
or equals signs
(``='').
To specify multiple keywords with customised headers, use multiple
-o
or
-O
options.
If all the keywords to be displayed have customised headers,
and all the customised headers are entirely empty,
then the header line is not printed at all.
- -p
-
Display information associated with the specified process
ID.
- -r
-
Sort by current CPU usage.
This is equivalent to
-k %cpu.
- -S
-
Change the way the process time is calculated by summing all exited
children to their parent process.
- -s
-
Display one line for each LWP, rather than one line for each process,
and display information associated with the following keywords:
uid, pid, ppid, cpu, lid, nlwp, pri, nice, vsz, rss,
wchan, lstate, tt, time,
and
command.
- -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.
Use an question mark
(``?'')
for processes not attached to a
terminal device and a minus sign
(``-'')
for processes that have
been revoked from their terminal device.
- -U
-
Displays processes belonging to the user whose username or uid has
been given to the
-U
switch.
- -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
''.
Ignored unless
-M
is specified.
- -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
-
Also 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 (in hexadecimal) associated with the process as in
the include file
<
sys/proc.h
>:
P_ADVLOCK 0x00000001 process may hold a POSIX advisory lock
|
P_CONTROLT 0x00000002 process has a controlling terminal
|
P_INMEM 0x00000004 process is loaded into memory
|
P_NOCLDSTOP 0x00000008 no
SIGCHLD
when children stop
|
P_PPWAIT 0x00000010 parent is waiting for child to exec/exit
|
P_PROFIL 0x00000020 process has started profiling
|
P_SELECT 0x00000040 selecting; wakeup/waiting danger
|
P_SINTR 0x00000080 sleep is interruptible
|
P_SUGID 0x00000100 process had set id privileges since last exec
|
P_SYSTEM 0x00000200 system process: no sigs, stats or swapping
|
P_TIMEOUT 0x00000400 timing out during sleep
|
P_TRACED 0x00000800 process is being traced
|
P_WAITED 0x00001000 debugging process has waited for child
|
P_WEXIT 0x00002000 working on exiting
|
P_EXEC 0x00004000 process called
execve(2)
|
P_OWEUPC 0x00008000 owe process an addupc() call at next ast
|
P_FSTRACE 0x00010000 tracing via file system
|
P_NOCLDWAIT 0x00020000 no zombies when children die
|
P_32 0x00040000 32-bit process (used on 64-bit kernels)
|
P_BIGLOCK 0x00080000 process needs kernel ``big lock'' to run
|
P_INEXEC 0x00100000 process is exec'ing and cannot be traced
|
P_SYSTRACE 0x00200000 process system call tracing active
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
- 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:%M%p''
format described in
strftime(3).
If the command started less than 7 days ago, the start time is
displayed using the
``%a%p''
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).
- O
-
Marks a process running on a processor.
- R
-
Marks a runnable process, or one that is in the process of creation.
- S
-
Marks a process that is sleeping for less than about 20 seconds.
- T
-
Marks a stopped process.
- U
-
Marks a suspended 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 LWP is detached (can't be waited for).
- <
-
The process has raised
CPU
scheduling priority.
- a
-
The process is using scheduler activations.
- E
-
The process is trying to exit.
- K
-
The process is a kernel thread or system process.
- L
-
The process has pages locked in core (for example, for raw
I/O).
- l
-
The process has multiple LWPs.
- N
-
The process has reduced
CPU
scheduling priority (see
setpriority(2)).
- s
-
The process is a session leader.
- V
-
The process is suspended during a
vfork(2).
- 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
will try to locate the processes' argument vector from the user
area in order to print the command name and arguments.
This method is not reliable because a process is allowed to destroy this
information.
The
ucomm
(accounting) keyword will always contain the real command name as
contained in the process structure's
p_comm
field.
If the command vector cannot be located (usually because it has not
been set, as is the case of system processes and/or kernel threads)
the command name is printed within square brackets.
To indicate that the argument vector has been tampered with,
ps
will append the real command name to the output within parentheses
if the basename of the first argument in the argument vector
does not match the contents of the real command name.
In addition,
ps
checks for the following two situations and does not append the
real command name parenthesized:
- -shellname
-
The login process traditionally adds a
`-'
in front of the shell name to indicate a login shell.
ps
will not append parenthesized the command name if it matches with
the name in the first argument of the argument vector, skipping
the leading
`-'.
- daemonname: current-activity
-
Daemon processes frequently report their current activity by setting
their name to be like
``daemonname: current-activity''.
ps
will not append parenthesized the command name, if the string preceding the
`:'
in the first argument of the argument vector matches the command name.
KEYWORDS
The following is a complete list of the available keywords and their
meanings.
Several of them have aliases (keywords which are synonyms).
- %cpu
-
percentage CPU usage (alias
pcpu)
- %mem
-
percentage memory usage (alias
pmem)
- acflag
-
accounting flag (alias
acflg)
- comm
-
command (the argv[0] value)
- command
-
command and arguments (alias
args)
- cpu
-
short-term CPU usage factor (for scheduling)
- cpuid
-
CPU number the current process or lwp is running on.
- ctime
-
accumulated CPU time of all children that have exited
- egid
-
effective group id
- egroup
-
group name (from egid)
- emul
-
emulation name
- etime
-
elapsed time since the process was started, in the form
[[dd-]hh:]mm:ss
- euid
-
effective user id
- euser
-
user name (from euid)
- flags
-
the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias
f)
- gid
-
effective group id
- group
-
group name (from gid)
- groupnames
-
group names (from group access list)
- groups
-
group access list
- holdcnt
-
number of holds on the process (if non-zero, process can't be swapped)
- inblk
-
total blocks read (alias
inblock)
- jobc
-
job control count
- ktrace
-
tracing flags
- ktracep
-
tracing vnode
- laddr
-
kernel virtual address of the
struct lwp
belonging to the LWP.
- lid
-
ID of the LWP
- lim
-
memory use limit
- lname
-
descriptive name of the LWP
- logname
-
login name of user who started the process (alias
login)
- lstart
-
time started
- lstate
-
symbolic LWP state
- 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
- nlwp
-
number of LWPs in the process
- 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 pointer (valid only for zombie)
- paddr
-
kernel virtual address of the
struct proc
belonging to the process.
- pagein
-
pageins (same as majflt)
- pgid
-
process group number
- pid
-
process
ID
- 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
- rlwp
-
Number of LWPs on a processor or run queue
- rss
-
resident set size
- rsz
-
resident set size + (text size / text use count) (alias
rssize)
- ruid
-
real user
ID
- ruser
-
user name (from ruid)
- sess
-
session pointer
- sid
-
session
ID
- 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)
- stime
-
accumulated system CPU time
- svgid
-
saved gid from a setgid executable
- svgroup
-
group name (from svgid)
- svuid
-
saved uid from a setuid executable
- svuser
-
user name (from svuid)
- 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
- uaddr
-
kernel virtual address of the
struct user
belonging to the LWP.
- 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)
- utime
-
accumulated user CPU time
- 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
/var/run/dev.db
-
/dev name database
/var/db/kvm.db
-
system namelist database
/netbsd
-
default system namelist
SEE ALSO
kill(1),
pgrep(1),
pkill(1),
sh(1),
w(1),
kvm(3),
strftime(3),
dev_mkdb(8),
pstat(8)
BUGS
Since
ps
cannot run faster than the system and is run as any other scheduled
process, the information it displays can never be exact.