path: root/bin/ps/ps.1

.\"	$OpenBSD: ps.1,v 1.34 2002/06/18 03:21:33 provos Exp $
.\"	$NetBSD: ps.1,v 1.16 1996/03/21 01:36:28 jtc Exp $
.\"
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.\"     @(#)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 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 2
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 indead 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 <defunct> ,
and a process which is blocked while trying
to exit is listed as
.Dq <exiting> .
.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 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 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 uprocp
process pointer
.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
.Cm $ 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 the 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.