bin/ps/ps.1

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.\"     @(#)ps.1	8.3 (Berkeley) 4/18/94
.\"
.Dd October 18, 2008
.Dt PS 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm ps
.Nd process status
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl AaCcehjlmrSsTuvwx
.Op Fl k Ar key
.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
.Fl L
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Nm
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
.Tn ID
may be changed using the
.Fl k , Fl m ,
or
.Fl r
options.
.Pp
The information displayed for each process
is selected based on a set of keywords (see the
.Fl L ,
.Fl O ,
and
.Fl o
options).
The default output format includes, for each process, the process'
.Tn ID ,
controlling terminal, CPU time (including both user and system time),
state, and associated command.
.Pp
The options are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl A
Display information about all processes.
This is equivalent to
.Fl a Fl x .
.It Fl a
Display information about other users' processes as well as your own.
Note that this does not display information about processes
without controlling terminals.
.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 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 e
Display the environment as well.
The environment for other
users' processes can only be displayed by the super-user.
.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:
.Ar user , pid , ppid , pgid , sess , jobc , state , tt , time ,
and
.Ar command .
.It Fl k
Sort the output using the space or comma separated list of keywords.
Multiple sort keys may be specified, using any of the
.Fl k , Fl m ,
or
.Fl r
options.
The default sort order is equivalent to
.Fl k Ar tdev,pid .
.It Fl L
List the set of available keywords.
.It Fl l
Display information associated with the following keywords:
.Ar uid , pid , ppid , cpu , pri , nice , vsz , rss , wchan , state ,
.Ar tt , time ,
and
.Ar command .
.It Fl M
Extract values from the specified core file instead of the running system.
.It Fl m
Sort by memory usage,
equivalent to
.Fl k Ar vsz .
.It Fl N
Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the default
.Dq Pa /netbsd .
Ignored unless
.Fl M
is specified.
.It Fl O
Display information associated with the space or comma separated list
of keywords specified.
The
.Fl O
option does not suppress the default display;
it inserts additional keywords just after the
.Ar pid
keyword in the default display, or after the
.Ar pid
keyword (if any) in a non-default display specified before the
first use of the
.Fl O
flag.
Keywords inserted by multiple
.Fl O
options will be adjacent.
.Pp
An equals sign
.Pq Dq \&=
followed by a customised header string may be appended to a keyword,
as described in more detail under the
.Fl o
option.
.It Fl o
Display information associated with the space or comma separated list
of keywords specified.
Use of the
.Fl o
option suppresses the set of keywords that would be displayed by default,
or appends to the set of keywords specified by other options.
.Pp
An equals sign
.Pq Dq \&=
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.
.Pp
Everything after the first equals sign is part of the customised
header text, and this may include embedded spaces
.Pq Dq " " ,
commas
.Pq Dq \&, ,
or equals signs
.Pq Dq \&= .
To specify multiple keywords with customised headers, use multiple
.Fl o
or
.Fl O
options.
.Pp
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.
.It Fl p
Display information associated with the specified process
.Tn ID .
.It Fl r
Sort by current CPU usage.
This is equivalent to
.Fl k Ar %cpu .
.It Fl S
Change the way the process time is calculated by summing all exited
children to their parent process.
.It Fl s
Display one line for each LWP, rather than one line for each process,
and display information associated with the following keywords:
.Ar uid , pid , ppid , cpu , lid , nlwp , pri , nice , vsz , rss ,
.Ar wchan , lstate , tt , time ,
and
.Ar command .
.It Fl T
Display information about processes attached to the device associated
with the standard input.
.It Fl t
Display information about processes attached to the specified terminal
device.
Use an question mark
.Pq Dq \&?
for processes not attached to a
terminal device and a minus sign
.Pq Dq -
for processes that have
been revoked from their terminal device.
.It Fl U
Displays processes belonging to the user whose username or uid has
been given to the
.Fl U
switch.
.It Fl u
Display information associated with the following keywords:
.Ar user , pid , %cpu , %mem , vsz , rss , tt , state , start , time ,
and
.Ar command .
The
.Fl u
option implies the
.Fl r
option.
.It Fl v
Display information associated with the following keywords:
.Ar pid , state , time , sl , re , pagein , vsz , rss , lim , tsiz ,
.Ar %cpu , %mem ,
and
.Ar command .
The
.Fl v
option implies the
.Fl m
option.
.It Fl W
Extract swap information from the specified file instead of the
default
.Dq Pa /dev/drum .
Ignored unless
.Fl M
is specified.
.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
Also display information about processes without controlling terminals.
.El
.Pp
A complete list of the available keywords are listed below.
Some of these keywords are further specified as follows:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Ar %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 Ar %mem
The percentage of real memory used by this process.
.It Ar 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 compact
.It Dv "P_ADVLOCK" Ta No "0x00000001	process may hold a POSIX advisory lock"
.It Dv "P_CONTROLT" Ta No "0x00000002	process has a controlling terminal"
.It Dv "P_INMEM" Ta No "0x00000004	process is loaded into memory"
.It Dv "P_NOCLDSTOP" Ta No "0x00000008	no
.Dv SIGCHLD
when children stop
.It Dv "P_PPWAIT" Ta No "0x00000010	parent is waiting for child to exec/exit"
.It Dv "P_PROFIL" Ta No "0x00000020	process has started profiling"
.It Dv "P_SELECT" Ta No "0x00000040	selecting; wakeup/waiting danger"
.It Dv "P_SINTR" Ta No "0x00000080	sleep is interruptible"
.It Dv "P_SUGID" Ta No "0x00000100	process had set id privileges since last exec"
.It Dv "P_SYSTEM" Ta No "0x00000200	system process: no sigs, stats or swapping"
.It Dv "P_TIMEOUT" Ta No "0x00000400	timing out during sleep"
.It Dv "P_TRACED" Ta No "0x00000800	process is being traced"
.It Dv "P_WAITED" Ta No "0x00001000	debugging process has waited for child"
.It Dv "P_WEXIT" Ta No "0x00002000	working on exiting"
.It Dv "P_EXEC" Ta No "0x00004000	process called"
.Xr execve 2
.It Dv "P_OWEUPC" Ta No "0x00008000	owe process an addupc() call at next ast"
.\" the routine addupc is not documented in the man pages
.It Dv "P_FSTRACE" Ta No "0x00010000	tracing via file system"
.It Dv "P_NOCLDWAIT" Ta No "0x00020000	no zombies when children die"
.It Dv "P_32" Ta No "0x00040000	32-bit process (used on 64-bit kernels)"
.It Dv "P_BIGLOCK" Ta No "0x00080000	process needs kernel ``big lock'' to run"
.It Dv "P_INEXEC" Ta No "0x00100000	process is exec'ing and cannot be traced"
.It Dv "P_SYSTRACE" Ta No "0x00200000	process system call tracing active"
.El
.It Ar lim
The soft limit on memory used, specified via a call to
.Xr setrlimit 2 .
.It Ar lstart
The exact time the command started, using the
.Dq \&%C
format described in
.Xr strftime 3 .
.It Ar nice
The process scheduling increment (see
.Xr setpriority 2 ) .
.It Ar rss
the real memory (resident set) size of the process (in 1024 byte units).
.It Ar 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%p
format.
Otherwise, the start time is displayed using the
.Dq %e%b%y
format.
.It Ar 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 O
Marks a process running on a processor.
.It R
Marks a runnable process, or one that is in the process of creation.
.It S
Marks a process that is sleeping for less than about 20 seconds.
.It T
Marks a stopped process.
.It U
Marks a suspended process.
.It Z
Marks a dead process (a
.Dq zombie ) .
.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 LWP is detached (can't be waited for).
.It \*[Lt]
The process has raised
.Tn CPU
scheduling priority.
.It a
The process is using scheduler activations.
.It E
The process is trying to exit.
.It K
The process is a kernel thread or system process.
.It L
The process has pages locked in core (for example, for raw
.Tn I/O ) .
.It l
The process has multiple LWPs.
.It N
The process has reduced
.Tn CPU
scheduling priority (see
.Xr setpriority 2 ) .
.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.
.El
.It Ar 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 Ar 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
.Ar 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 Aq defunct ,
and a process which is blocked while trying to exit is listed as
.Dq Aq exiting .
.Pp
.Nm
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
.Ar ucomm
(accounting) keyword will always contain the real command name as
contained in the process structure's
.Va p_comm
field.
.Pp
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.
.Pp
To indicate that the argument vector has been tampered with,
.Nm
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.
.Pp
In addition,
.Nm
checks for the following two situations and does not append the
real command name parenthesized:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It -shellname
The login process traditionally adds a
.Sq -
in front of the shell name to indicate a login shell.
.Nm
will not append parenthesized the command name if it matches with
the name in the first argument of the argument vector, skipping
the leading
.Sq - .
.It daemonname: current-activity
Daemon processes frequently report their current activity by setting
their name to be like
.Dq daemonname: current-activity .
.Nm
will not append parenthesized the command name, if the string preceding the
.Sq \&:
in the first argument of the argument vector matches the command name.
.El
.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 groupnames -compact
.It Ar %cpu
percentage CPU usage (alias
.Ar pcpu )
.It Ar %mem
percentage memory usage (alias
.Ar pmem )
.It Ar acflag
accounting flag (alias
.Ar acflg )
.It Ar comm
command (the argv[0] value)
.It Ar command
command and arguments (alias
.Ar args )
.It Ar cpu
short-term CPU usage factor (for scheduling)
.It Ar cpuid
CPU number the current process or lwp is running on.
.It Ar ctime
accumulated CPU time of all children that have exited
.It Ar egid
effective group id
.It Ar egroup
group name (from egid)
.It Ar emul
emulation name
.It Ar etime
elapsed time since the process was started, in the form
.Li [[dd-]hh:]mm:ss
.It Ar euid
effective user id
.It Ar euser
user name (from euid)
.It Ar flags
the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias
.Ar f )
.It Ar gid
effective group id
.It Ar group
group name (from gid)
.It Ar groupnames
group names (from group access list)
.It Ar groups
group access list
.It Ar holdcnt
number of holds on the process (if non-zero, process can't be swapped)
.It Ar inblk
total blocks read (alias
.Ar inblock )
.It Ar jobc
job control count
.It Ar ktrace
tracing flags
.It Ar ktracep
tracing vnode
.It Ar laddr
kernel virtual address of the
.Tn "struct lwp"
belonging to the LWP.
.It Ar lid
ID of the LWP
.It Ar lim
memory use limit
.It Ar lname
descriptive name of the LWP
.It Ar logname
login name of user who started the process (alias
.Ar login )
.It Ar lstart
time started
.It Ar lstate
symbolic LWP state
.It Ar majflt
total page faults
.It Ar minflt
total page reclaims
.It Ar msgrcv
total messages received (reads from pipes/sockets)
.It Ar msgsnd
total messages sent (writes on pipes/sockets)
.It Ar nice
nice value (alias
.Ar ni )
.It Ar nivcsw
total involuntary context switches
.It Ar nlwp
number of LWPs in the process
.It Ar nsigs
total signals taken (alias
.Ar nsignals )
.It Ar nswap
total swaps in/out
.It Ar nvcsw
total voluntary context switches
.It Ar nwchan
wait channel (as an address)
.It Ar oublk
total blocks written (alias
.Ar oublock )
.It Ar p_ru
resource usage pointer (valid only for zombie)
.It Ar paddr
kernel virtual address of the
.Tn "struct proc"
belonging to the process.
.It Ar pagein
pageins (same as majflt)
.It Ar pgid
process group number
.It Ar pid
process
.Tn ID
.It Ar ppid
parent process
.Tn ID
.It Ar pri
scheduling priority
.It Ar re
core residency time (in seconds; 127 = infinity)
.It Ar rgid
real group
.Tn ID
.It Ar rlink
reverse link on run queue, or 0
.It Ar rlwp
Number of LWPs on a processor or run queue
.It Ar rss
resident set size
.It Ar rsz
resident set size + (text size / text use count) (alias
.Ar rssize )
.It Ar ruid
real user
.Tn ID
.It Ar ruser
user name (from ruid)
.It Ar sess
session pointer
.It Ar sid
session
.Tn ID
.It Ar sig
pending signals (alias
.Ar pending )
.It Ar sigcatch
caught signals (alias
.Ar caught )
.It Ar sigignore
ignored signals (alias
.Ar ignored )
.It Ar sigmask
blocked signals (alias
.Ar blocked )
.It Ar sl
sleep time (in seconds; 127 = infinity)
.It Ar start
time started
.It Ar state
symbolic process state (alias
.Ar stat )
.It Ar stime
accumulated system CPU time
.It Ar svgid
saved gid from a setgid executable
.It Ar svgroup
group name (from svgid)
.It Ar svuid
saved uid from a setuid executable
.It Ar svuser
user name (from svuid)
.It Ar tdev
control terminal device number
.It Ar time
accumulated CPU time, user + system (alias
.Ar cputime )
.It Ar tpgid
control terminal process group
.Tn ID
.It Ar tsess
control terminal session pointer
.It Ar tsiz
text size (in Kbytes)
.It Ar tt
control terminal name (two letter abbreviation)
.It Ar tty
full name of control terminal
.It Ar uaddr
kernel virtual address of the
.Tn "struct user"
belonging to the LWP.
.It Ar ucomm
name to be used for accounting
.It Ar uid
effective user
.Tn ID
.It Ar upr
scheduling priority on return from system call (alias
.Ar usrpri )
.It Ar user
user name (from uid)
.It Ar utime
accumulated user CPU time
.It Ar vsz
virtual size in Kbytes (alias
.Ar vsize )
.It Ar wchan
wait channel (as a symbolic name)
.It Ar xstat
exit or stop status (valid only for stopped or zombie process)
.El
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /var/run/kvm.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.db
system namelist database
.It Pa /netbsd
default system namelist
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr kill 1 ,
.Xr pgrep 1 ,
.Xr pkill 1 ,
.Xr sh 1 ,
.Xr w 1 ,
.Xr kvm 3 ,
.Xr strftime 3 ,
.Xr dev_mkdb 8 ,
.Xr pstat 8
.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.