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PS(1)                     BSD General Commands Manual                    PS(1)

NAME
     ps -- process status

SYNOPSIS
     ps [-AaCcEefhjlMmrSTvwXx] [-O fmt | -o fmt] [-G gid[,gid...]] [-g grp[,grp...]] [-u uid[,uid...]]
        [-p pid[,pid...]] [-t tty[,tty...]] [-U user[,user...]]
     ps [-L]

DESCRIPTION
     The ps utility displays a header line, followed by lines containing information about all of your pro-cesses processes
     cesses that have controlling terminals.

     A different set of processes can be selected for display by using any combination of the -a, -G, -g,
     -p, -T, -t, -U, and -u options.  If more than one of these options are given, then ps will select all
     processes which are matched by at least one of the given options.

     For the processes which have been selected for display, ps will usually display one line per process.
     The -M option may result in multiple output lines (one line per thread) for some processes.  By default
     all of these output lines are sorted first by controlling terminal, then by process ID.  The -m, -r,
     and -v options will change the sort order.  If more than one sorting option was given, then the
     selected processes will be sorted by the last sorting option which was specified.

     For the processes which have been selected for display, the information to display 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 other users' processes, including those without controlling termi-nals. terminals.
             nals.

     -a      Display information about other users' processes as well as your own.  This will skip any pro-cesses processes
             cesses which do not have a controlling terminal, unless the -x option is also specified.

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

     -d      Like -A, but excludes session leaders.

     -E      Display the environment as well.

     -e      Identical to -A.

     -f      Display the uid, pid, parent pid, recent CPU usage, process start time, controling tty, elapsed
             CPU usage, and the associated command.  If the -u option is also used, display the user name
             rather then the numeric uid.  When -o or -O is used to add to the display following -f, the
             command field is not truncated as severely as it is in other formats.

     -G      Display information about processes which are running with the specified real group IDs.

     -g      Display information about processes with the specified session leaders.

     -h      Repeat the information header as often as necessary to guarantee one header per page of infor-mation. information.
             mation.

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

     -L      List the set of keywords available for the -O and -o options.

     -l      Display information associated with the following keywords: uid, pid, ppid, flags, cpu, pri,
             nice, vsz=SZ, rss, wchan, state=S, paddr=ADDR, tty, time, and command=CMD.

     -M      Print the threads corresponding to each task.

     -m      Sort by memory usage, instead of the combination of controlling terminal and process ID.

     -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.
             Multiple keywords may also be given in the form of more than one -o option.  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.  If all keywords have empty header texts, no
             header line is written.

     -p      Display information about processes which match the specified process IDs.

     -r      Sort by current CPU usage, instead of the combination of controlling terminal and 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 devices.

     -U      Display the processes belonging to the specified real user IDs.

     -u      Display the processes belonging to the specified usernames.

     -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      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.  When output is not to a terminal, an unlimited number of columns
             are always used.

     -X      When displaying processes matched by other options, skip any processes which do not have a con-trolling controlling
             trolling terminal.

     -x      When displaying processes matched by other options, include processes which do not have a con-trolling controlling
             trolling terminal.  This is the opposite of the -X option.  If both -X and -x are specified in
             the same command, then ps will use the one which was specified last.

     A complete list of the available keywords is given 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 previ-ous previous
               ous (real) time.  Because the time base over which this is computed varies (some 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 <sys/proc.h>:

               P_ADVLOCK           0x00001      Process may hold a POSIX advisory lock
               P_CONTROLT          0x00002      Has a controlling terminal
               P_LP64              0x00004      Process is LP64
               P_NOCLDSTOP         0x00008      No SIGCHLD when children stop
               P_PPWAIT            0x00010      Parent is waiting for child to exec/exit
               P_PROFIL            0x00020      Has started profiling
               P_SELECT            0x00040      Selecting; wakeup/waiting danger
               P_CONTINUED         0x00080      Process was stopped and continued
               P_SUGID             0x00100      Had set id privileges since last exec
               P_SYSTEM            0x00200      System proc: no sigs, stats or swapping
               P_TIMEOUT           0x00400      Timing out during sleep
               P_TRACED            0x00800      Debugged process being traced
               P_WAITED            0x01000      Debugging process has waited for child
               P_WEXIT             0x02000      Working on exiting
               P_EXEC              0x04000      Process called exec
               P_OWEUPC            0x08000      Owe process an addupc() call at next ast
               P_WAITING           0x40000      Process has a wait() in progress
               P_KDEBUG            0x80000        Kdebug tracing on for this process

     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 characters, for example, ``RWNA''.  The first character
               indicates the run state of the process:

               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.
               U       Marks a process in uninterruptible wait.
               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 exam-ple, example,
                       ple, 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(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 con-sists consists
               sists of the three letters following /dev/tty, or, for the console, ``con''.  This is fol-lowed followed
               lowed 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>''.  If the arguments 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.  The process can change the arguments shown with setproctitle(3).
     Otherwise, ps makes an educated guess as to the file name and arguments given when the process was cre-ated created
     ated 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.  The ucomm (accounting) keyword can, however,
     be depended on.  If the arguments are unavailable or do not agree with the ucomm keyword, the value for
     the ucomm keyword is appended to the arguments in parentheses.

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)
     args       command and arguments
     comm       command
     command    command and arguments
     cpu        short-term CPU usage factor (for scheduling)
     etime      elapsed running time
     flags      the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias f)
     gid        processes group id (alias group)
     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 session
     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
     ppid       parent process ID
     pri        scheduling priority
     re         core residency time (in seconds; 127 = infinity)
     rgid       real group ID
     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 ID
     sig        pending signals (alias pending)
     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 ID
     tsiz       text size (in Kbytes)
     tt         control terminal name (two letter abbreviation)
     tty        full name of control terminal
     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      user CPU time (alias putime)
     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)

ENVIRONMENT
     The following environment variables affect the execution of ps:

     COLUMNS  If set, specifies the user's preferred output width in column positions.  By default, ps
              attempts to automatically determine the terminal width.

FILES
     /dev                 special files and device names
     /var/run/dev.db      /dev name database
     /var/db/kvm_kernel.db
                          system namelist database

LEGACY DESCRIPTION
     In legacy mode, ps functions as described above, with the following differences:

     -e      Display the environment as well. Same as -E.

     -g      Ignored for compatibility. Takes no argument.

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

     -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.

     The biggest change is in the interpretation of the -u option, which now displays processes belonging to
     the specified username(s).  Thus, "ps -aux" will fail (unless you want to know about user "x").  As a
     convenience, however, "ps aux" still works as it did in Tiger.

     For more information about legacy mode, see compat(5).

SEE ALSO
     kill(1), w(1), kvm(3), strftime(3), sysctl(8)

STANDARDS
     The ps utility supports the Version 3 of the Single UNIX Specification (``SUSv3'') standard.

HISTORY
     The ps command appeared in Version 4 AT&T UNIX.

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.

     The ps utility does not correctly display argument lists containing multibyte characters.

BSD                             March 20, 2005                             BSD

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