NAME

ps - (BSD) process status

SYNOPSIS

/usr/local/heirloom/usr/ucb/ps [-aAcglnrSuvwx] [-o property[=[title]], ...] ... [-GptU criteria, ...] ... [pid]

DESCRIPTION

Ps prints certain indicia about active processes. If no options are specified, all processes on the current terminal that are owned by the invoking user and are not session leaders are selected. Specifying -a selects other users' processes; specifying -x selects processes without controlling terminals. The selection can further be changed by adding criteria with the options below; when a process satifies any criterion, it is selected. A criteria string can consist of multiple criteria separated by blanks or commas. If the pid argument is present, output is restriced to the selected process.

By default, ps prints the process id, controlling terminal device, process status, cumulative execution time and command of processes.

The ps command accepts the following options:

-a: Selects all processes with a controlling terminal device (including session leaders).
-c: Prints the command name, as stored internally in the system for purposes of accounting, rather than the command arguments, which are kept in the process' address space. This is more reliable, if less informative, since the process is free to destroy the latter information.
-g: Includes session leaders in the output. Without this option, ps only prints ``interesting'' processes. Processes are deemed to be uninteresting if they are session leaders. This normally eliminates top-level command interpreters and processes waiting for users to login on free terminals.
-l: Long listing; adds process flags, numeric user id, parent process id, cpu usage, priority, nice value, memory and resident set size in pages and the event waited for. See below for the meaning of columns.
-n: For a user listing as selected with -u, print the numeric user ID instead of the user name.
-r: Causes only running processes to be printed.
-S: Includes the time used by children that have been waited for.
-t device: Selects all processes with the current terminal device. This may be the device name with either /dev/ or /dev/tty omitted, as in ttyS2 or S2 for /dev/ttyS2. Giving ? as a device name selects processes with no controlling terminal.
-u: A user oriented output is produced; adds user name, processor usage, memory and resident set size, and the time when the process was started.
-v: A version of the output containing virtual memory statistics is output; adds memory and resident set size.
-w: Increase output width. The default width of 80 columns is set to 132 if this option is given once; if given more than once, the output width is unlimited.
-x: Include processes that have no controlling terminal.

The following options have been introduced by POSIX.2:

-A: Selects all processes.
-G gidlist: Selects all processes that have one of the specified real group ids, which may be symbolic or numeric.
-o property[=[title]],...: The output is changed to reflect the named property. Multiple properties can be given, separated by blanks or commas; it is also possible to specify multiple -o options. Normally, the default property description is written in the first output line. If the = character is present, but the title is missing in all format specifications, no descriptions are printed; if a title is given, it is used instead of the default. See below for valid property strings.
-p pidlist: Selects all processes with one of the given process ids.
-U uidlist: Selects all processes with one of the given real user ids, which may be symbolic or numeric.

The meaning of columns and column headings are as follows:

F	Flags associated with the process (octal and additive):
		01	in core;
		02	system process;
		04	locked in core (e.g. for physical I/O);
		10	being swapped;
		20	being traced by another process.
S	The state of the process:
		R	running;
		S	sleeping;
		I	intermediate;
		Z	terminated;
		T	stopped;
		X	allocating memory.
UID	The effective user ID of the process owner.
USER	The name of the process owner, based on the effective user ID.
PID	The process id of the process; as in certain cults it is possible to kill a process if you know its true name.
PPID	The process ID of the parent process.
CP	Processor utilization for scheduling.
PRI	Priority. High numbers mean low priority.
NI	Nice value, used in priority computation.
ADDR	The core address of the process.
RSS	The amount of memory in pages currently present in core.
SZ	The size in pages of the core image of the process.
WCHAN	The event for which the process is waiting or sleeping; if blank, the process is running.
START	The time when the process was started.
TT	The controlling tty for the process.
TIME	The cumulative execution time for the process, including its terminated children if -S is present.
COMMAND	The command line; with the -c option, the command name.

A process that has exited and has a parent, but has not yet been waited for by the parent is marked <defunct>.

For the -o option, the following properties (listed with their default column headings) can be given:

user	USER	Effective user name.
ruser	RUSER	Real user name.
group	GROUP	Effective group name.
rgroup	RGROUP	Real group name.
pid	PID	Process id.
ppid	PPID	Parent process id.
pgid	PGID	Process group id.
sid	SID	Session id.
class	CLASS	Scheduling class.
pcpu	%CPU	Processor usage in percent.
vsz	VSZ	Memory usage in kilobytes.
nice	NI	Nice value.
etime	ELAPSED	Time elapsed since the process was started.
time	TIME	Cumulative execution time.
tty	TTY	Controlling terminal device.
comm	COMMAND	The first command line argument.
args	COMMAND	Command line arguments separated by spaces.
f	F	Process flags.
s	S	Process state.
c	C	Processor utilization for scheduling.
uid	UID	Numeric effective user id.
ruid	RUID	Numeric real user id.
gid	GID	Numeric effective group id.
rgid	RGID	Numeric real group id.
pri	PRI	Priority; high numbers mean high priority.
opri	PRI	Priority; high numbers mean low priority.
psr	PSR	Processor.
addr	ADDR	Core address.
osz	SZ	Memory size in pages.
wchan	WCHAN	Event for which the process is waiting.
stime	STIME	Start time of the process.
rss	RSS	Resident set size in kilobytes.
pmem	%MEM	Memory usage in percent.
fname	COMMAND	The first 16 characters of the executable file for the process.

For those properties that correspond to user or group names, the numeric id is printed if the name does not fit into the column width.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

COLUMNS: Overrides the default output width.
LANG, LC_ALL: See locale(7).
LC_CTYPE: Determines the set of printable characters and the character width. Non-printable characters in arguments and file names are dropped if writing to a terminal.
LC_TIME: Affects the format of date and time strings printed.

FILES

/etc/passwd: Used for converting numeric and symbolic user ids.
/etc/group: Used for converting numeric and symbolic group ids.
/usr/local/heirloom/etc/default/ps
/proc/
/dev/

NOTES