.\" $OpenBSD: ps.1,v 1.40 2003/04/28 06:27:36 jmc Exp $ .\" $NetBSD: ps.1,v 1.16 1996/03/21 01:36:28 jtc Exp $ .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software .\" must display the following acknowledgement: .\" This product includes software developed by the University of .\" California, Berkeley and its contributors. .\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" @(#)ps.1 8.3 (Berkeley) 4/18/94 .\" .Dd April 18, 1994 .Dt PS 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm ps .Nd process status .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm ps .Sm off .Oo \&- Oc Op Cm acCehjklmrSTuvwx .Sm on .Op Fl M Ar core .Op Fl N Ar system .Op Fl O Ar fmt .Op Fl o Ar fmt .Op Fl p Ar pid .Op Fl t Ar tty .Op Fl U Ar username .Op Fl W Ar swap .Nm ps .Op Fl L .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm utility displays information about active processes. When given no options, .Nm prints information about processes associated with the controlling terminal. .Pp The information displayed is selected based on a set of keywords (and for even more control, see the .Fl L , .Fl O , and .Fl o options). The default output format includes, for each process, the process's ID, controlling terminal, CPU time (including both user and system time), state, and associated command. .Pp The options are as follows: .Bl -tag -width Ds .It Fl a Display information about other users' processes as well as your own. .It Fl c Do not display full command with arguments, but only the executable name. This may be somewhat confusing; for example, all .Xr sh 1 scripts will show as .Dq sh . .It Fl C Change the way the CPU percentage is calculated by using a .Dq raw CPU calculation that ignores .Dq resident time (this normally has no effect). .It Fl e Display the environment as well. .It Fl h Repeat the information header as often as necessary to guarantee one header per page of information. .It Fl j Print information associated with the following keywords: user, pid, ppid, pgid, sess, jobc, state, tt, time, and command. .It Fl k Also display information about kernel threads. .It Fl L List the set of available keywords. .It Fl l Display information associated with the following keywords: uid, pid, ppid, cpu, pri, nice, vsz, rss, wchan, state, tt, time and command. .It Fl M Ar core Extract values associated with the name list from the specified core instead of the running kernel. .It Fl m Sort by memory usage, instead of by start time .Tn ID . .It Fl N Ar system Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the running kernel. .It Fl O Ar fmt Add the information associated with the space or comma separated list of keywords specified, after the process .Tn ID , in the default information display. Keywords may be appended with an equals sign .Pq Sq = and a string. This causes the printed header to use the specified string instead of the standard header. .It Fl o Ar fmt Display information associated with the space or comma separated list of keywords specified. Keywords may be appended with an equals sign .Pq Sq = and a string. This causes the printed header to use the specified string instead of the standard header. .It Fl p Ar pid Display information associated with the specified process .Tn ID . .It Fl r Sort by current CPU usage, instead of by start time .Tn ID . .It Fl S Change the way the process time is calculated by summing all exited children to their parent process. .It Fl T Display information about processes attached to the device associated with the standard input. .It Fl t Ar tty Display information about processes attached to the specified terminal device. .It Fl U Ar username Display the processes belonging to the specified .Ar username . .It Fl u Display information associated with the following keywords: user, pid, %cpu, %mem, vsz, rss, tt, state, start, time, and command. The .Fl u option implies the .Fl r option. .It Fl v Display information associated with the following keywords: pid, state, time, sl, re, pagein, vsz, rss, lim, tsiz, %cpu, %mem and command. The .Fl v option implies the .Fl m option. .It Fl W Ar swap Extract swap information from the specified file instead of the default .Dq Pa /dev/drum . .It Fl w Use 132 columns to display information, instead of the default, which is your window size. If the .Fl w option is specified more than once, .Nm will use as many columns as necessary without regard for your window size. .It Fl x Display information about processes without controlling terminals. .El .Pp All available keywords are listed below. Some of these keywords are further specified as follows: .Bl -tag -width indent .It %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 .Tn \&%cpu fields to exceed 100%. .It %mem The percentage of real memory used by this process. .It flags The flags (in hexadecimal) associated with the process as in the include file .Aq Pa sys/proc.h : .Bl -column P_NOCLDSTOP P_NOCLDSTOP .It Dv "P_ADVLOCK" Ta No "0x0000001 process may hold a POSIX advisory lock" .It Dv "P_CONTROLT" Ta No "0x0000002 process has a controlling terminal" .It Dv "P_INMEM" Ta No "0x0000004 process is loaded into memory" .It Dv "P_NOCLDSTOP" Ta No "0x0000008 no .Dv SIGCHLD when children stop .It Dv "P_PPWAIT" Ta No "0x0000010 parent is waiting for child to exec/exit" .It Dv "P_PROFIL" Ta No "0x0000020 process has started profiling" .It Dv "P_SELECT" Ta No "0x0000040 selecting; wakeup/waiting danger" .It Dv "P_SINTR" Ta No "0x0000080 sleep is interruptible" .It Dv "P_SUGID" Ta No "0x0000100 process had set id privileges since last exec" .It Dv "P_SYSTEM" Ta No "0x0000200 system process: no sigs, stats or swapping" .It Dv "P_TIMEOUT" Ta No "0x0000400 timing out during sleep" .It Dv "P_TRACED" Ta No "0x0000800 process is being traced" .It Dv "P_WAITED" Ta No "0x0001000 debugging process has waited for child" .It Dv "P_WEXIT" Ta No "0x0002000 working on exiting" .It Dv "P_EXEC" Ta No "0x0004000 process called" .Xr exec 3 .It Dv "P_OWEUPC" Ta No "0x0008000 owe process an addupc() call at next ast" .\" the routine addupc is not documented in the man pages .It Dv "P_FSTRACE" Ta No "0x0010000 tracing via file system" .It Dv "P_SSTEP" Ta No "0x0020000 process needs single-step fixup" .It Dv "P_SUGIDEXEC" Ta No "0x0040000 last .Xr exec 3 was set[ug]id .It Dv "P_NOCLDWAIT" Ta No "0x0080000 let pid 1 wait for my children" .It Dv "P_NOZOMBIE" Ta No "0x0100000 pid 1 waits for me instead of dad" .It Dv "P_INEXEC" Ta No "0x0200000 process is doing an exec right now" .It Dv "P_SYSTRACE" Ta No "0x0400000 process system call tracing is active" .El .It lim The soft limit on memory used, specified via a call to .Xr setrlimit 2 . .It lstart The exact time the command started, using the .Dq %c format described in .Xr strftime 3 . .It nice The process scheduling increment (see .Xr setpriority 2 ) . .It rss The real memory (resident set) size of the process (in 1024 byte units). .It start The time the command started. If the command started less than 24 hours ago, the start time is displayed using the .Dq %l:%M%p format described in .Xr strftime 3 . If the command started less than 7 days ago, the start time is displayed using the .Dq %a%I%p format. Otherwise, the start time is displayed using the .Dq %e%b%y format. .It state The state is given by a sequence of letters, for example, .Dq Tn RWNA . The first letter indicates the run state of the process: .Pp .Bl -tag -width indent -compact .It D Marks a process in disk (or other short term, uninterruptible) wait. .It I Marks a process that is idle (sleeping for longer than about 20 seconds). .It R Marks a runnable process. .It S Marks a process that is sleeping for less than about 20 seconds. .It T Marks a stopped process. .It Z Marks a dead process (a .Dq zombie Ns ) . .El .Pp Additional characters after these, if any, indicate additional state information: .Pp .Bl -tag -width indent -compact .It + The process is in the foreground process group of its control terminal. .It < The process has raised .Tn CPU scheduling priority. .It > The process has specified a soft limit on memory requirements and is currently exceeding that limit; such a process is (necessarily) not swapped. .\" .It A .\" the process has asked for random page replacement .\" .Pf ( Dv MADV_RANDOM , .\" from .\" .Xr madvise 2 , .\" for example, .\" .Xr lisp 1 .\" in a garbage collect). .It E The process is trying to exit. .It K The process is a kernel thread. .It L The process has pages locked in core (for example, for raw .Tn I/O ) . .It N The process has reduced .Tn CPU scheduling priority (see .Xr setpriority 2 ) . .\" .It S .\" The process has asked for .\" .Tn FIFO .\" page replacement .\" .Pf ( Dv MADV_SEQUENTIAL , .\" from .\" .Xr madvise 2 , .\" for example, a large image processing program using virtual memory to .\" sequentially address voluminous data). .It s The process is a session leader. .It V The process is suspended during a .Xr vfork 2 . .It W The process is swapped out. .It X The process is being traced or debugged. .It x The process is being monitored by .Xr systrace 1 . .El .It tt An abbreviation for the pathname of the controlling terminal, if any. The abbreviation consists of the two letters following .Dq Pa /dev/tty , or, for the console, .Dq co . This is followed by a .Dq \- if the process can no longer reach that controlling terminal (i.e., it has been revoked). .It 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. .El .Pp 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 .Dq , and a process which is blocked while trying to exit is listed as .Dq . .Nm 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. .Sh KEYWORDS The following is a complete list of the available keywords and their meanings. Several of them have aliases (keywords which are synonyms). .Pp .Bl -tag -width sigignore -compact .It %cpu percentage CPU usage (alias pcpu) .It %mem percentage memory usage (alias pmem) .It acflag accounting flag (alias acflg) .It command command and arguments (alias args) .It cpu short-term CPU usage factor (for scheduling) .It dsiz data size (in Kbytes) .It emul name of system call emulation environment .It flags the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias f) .It gid effective group .It group text name of effective group .Tn ID .It holdcnt number of holds on the process (if non-zero, process can't be swapped) .It inblk total blocks read (alias inblock) .It jobc job control count .It ktrace tracing flags .It ktracep tracing vnode .It lim memoryuse limit .It logname login name of user who started the process (alias login) .It lstart time started .It majflt total page faults .It minflt total page reclaims .It msgrcv total messages received (reads from pipes/sockets) .It msgsnd total messages sent (writes on pipes/sockets) .It nice nice value (alias ni) .It nivcsw total involuntary context switches .It nsigs total signals taken (alias nsignals) .It nswap total swaps in/out .It nvcsw total voluntary context switches .It nwchan wait channel (as an address) .It oublk total blocks written (alias oublock) .It p_ru resource usage (valid only for zombie) .It paddr swap address .It pagein pageins (same as majflt) .It pgid process group number .It pid process .Tn ID .It ppid parent process .Tn ID .It pri scheduling priority .It re core residency time (in seconds; 127 = infinity) .It rgid real group .Tn ID .It rgroup text name of real group .Tn ID .It rlink reverse link on run queue, or 0 .It rss resident set size .It rsz resident set size + (text size / text use count) (alias rssize) .It ruid real user .Tn ID .It ruser user name (from ruid) .It sess session pointer .It sig pending signals (alias pending) .It sigcatch caught signals (alias caught) .It sigignore ignored signals (alias ignored) .It sigmask blocked signals (alias blocked) .It sl sleep time (in seconds; 127 = infinity) .It ssiz stack size (in Kbytes) .It start time started (alias etime) .It state symbolic process state (alias stat) .It svgid saved GID from a setgid executable .It svuid saved UID from a setuid executable .It tdev control terminal device number .It time accumulated CPU time, user + system (alias cputime) .It tpgid control terminal process group .Tn ID .\".It trss .\"text resident set size (in Kbytes) .It tsess control terminal session pointer .It tsiz text size (in Kbytes) .It tt control terminal name (two letter abbreviation) .It tty full name of control terminal .It ucomm name to be used for accounting (alias comm) .It uid effective user .Tn ID .It upr scheduling priority on return from system call (alias usrpri) .It user user name (from uid) .It vsz virtual size in Kbytes (alias vsize) .It wchan wait channel (as a symbolic name) .It xstat exit or stop status (valid only for stopped or zombie process) .El .Sh EXAMPLES .Li $ ps -auxw .Pp Display information on all system processes. .Sh FILES .Bl -tag -width /var/db/kvm_bsd.db -compact .It Pa /dev special files and device names .It Pa /dev/drum default swap device .It Pa /var/run/dev.db /dev name database .It Pa /var/db/kvm_bsd.db system namelist database .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr kill 1 , .Xr sh 1 , .Xr top 1 , .Xr w 1 , .Xr kvm 3 , .Xr strftime 3 , .Xr pstat 8 .Sh HISTORY A .Nm command appeared in .At v3 in section 8 of the manual. .Sh BUGS Since .Nm cannot run faster than the system and is run as any other scheduled process, the information it displays can never be exact.