bin/ps/ps.1

.\"	$OpenBSD: ps.1,v 1.139 2024/10/15 13:49:49 claudio 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 $Mdocdate: October 15 2024 $
.Dt PS 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm ps
.Nd display process status
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm ps
.Sm off
.Op Oo Fl Oc Cm AacefHhjkLlmrSTuvwx
.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 user
.Op Fl W Ar swap
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility displays information about active processes.
When given no options,
.Nm
prints information about processes of the current user that have a
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, state, CPU time (including both user and system time),
and associated command.
.Pp
The options are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Fl A
Display information about processes for all users,
including those without controlling terminals.
.It Fl a
Display information about processes for all users with controlling terminals.
.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.
.It Fl f
Arrange processes into a tree.
Each command is ordered and prefixed with indentation text
showing sibling and parent/child relationships.
If either of the
.Fl m
and
.Fl r
options are also used, they control how sibling processes are sorted relative
to each other.
.It Fl H
Also display information about kernel visible threads.
.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.
This option should not be specified with other options.
.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 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 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 ID.
.It Fl r
Sort by current CPU usage, instead of by start time 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 user
Only display processes belonging to username or UID
.Ar user .
.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
When not using the running kernel,
extract swap information from the specified file.
.It Fl w
Use 132 columns to display information, instead of the default, which
is the window size.
If the
.Fl w
option is specified more than once,
.Nm
will use as many columns as necessary without regard for window size.
.It Fl x
Display information about processes without controlling terminals.
.El
.Sh KEYWORDS
The following is a complete list of the available keywords
and their meanings.
Several of them have aliases,
which are also noted.
.Bl -tag -width "sigignoreXX" -offset 3n
.It Cm %cpu
Alias:
.Cm pcpu .
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
.Cm %cpu
fields to exceed 100%.
.It Cm %mem
Alias:
.Cm pmem .
The percentage of real memory used by this process.
.It Cm acflag
Alias:
.Cm acflg .
Accounting flag.
.It Cm command
Alias:
.Cm args .
Command and arguments.
.It Cm cpu
Short-term CPU usage factor (for scheduling).
.It Cm cpuid
CPU ID (zero on single processor systems).
.It Cm cwd
Current working directory.
.It Cm dsiz
Data size, in Kilobytes.
.It Cm etime
Elapsed time since the process was started.
.It Cm flags
Alias:
.Cm f .
The thread flags (in hexadecimal), as defined in the include file
.In sys/proc.h :
.Bd -literal
P_INKTR           0x1 writing ktrace(2) record
P_PROFPEND        0x2 this thread needs SIGPROF
P_ALRMPEND        0x4 this thread needs SIGVTALRM
P_SIGSUSPEND      0x8 need to restore before-suspend mask
P_CANTSLEEP      0x10 this thread is not permitted to sleep
P_SINTR          0x80 sleep is interruptible
P_SYSTEM        0x200 system process: no sigs, stats, or
                      swapping
P_TIMEOUT       0x400 timing out during sleep
P_WEXIT        0x2000 working on exiting
P_OWEUPC       0x8000 profiling sample needs recording
P_SUSPSINGLE  0x80000 need to suspend for single threading
P_THREAD    0x4000000 not the original thread
P_SUSPSIG   0x8000000 stopped because of a signal
P_CPUPEG   0x40000000 do not move to another cpu
.Ed
.It Cm gid
Effective group.
.It Cm group
Text name of effective group ID.
.It Cm inblk
Alias:
.Cm inblock .
Total blocks read.
.It Cm jobc
Job control count.
.It Cm ktrace
Tracing flags.
.It Cm ktracep
Tracing vnode.
.It Cm lim
The soft limit on memory used, specified via a call to
.Xr setrlimit 2 .
.It Cm logname
Alias:
.Cm login .
Login name of user who started the process.
.It Cm lstart
The exact time the command started, using the
.Dq %c
format described in
.Xr strftime 3 .
.It Cm majflt
Total page faults.
.It Cm maxrss
Maximum resident set size (in 1024 byte units).
.It Cm minflt
Total page reclaims.
.It Cm msgrcv
Total messages received (reads from pipes/sockets).
.It Cm msgsnd
Total messages sent (writes on pipes/sockets).
.It Cm nice
Alias:
.Cm ni .
The process scheduling increment (see
.Xr setpriority 2 ) .
.It Cm nivcsw
Total involuntary context switches.
.It Cm nsigs
Alias:
.Cm nsignals .
Total signals taken.
.It Cm nswap
Total swaps in/out.
.It Cm nvcsw
Total voluntary context switches.
.It Cm nwchan
Wait channel (as an address).
.It Cm oublk
Alias:
.Cm oublock .
Total blocks written.
.It Cm p_ru
Resource usage (valid only for zombie processes).
.It Cm paddr
Swap address.
.It Cm pagein
Pageins (same as
.Cm majflt ) .
.It Cm pgid
Process group number.
.It Cm pid
Process ID.
.It Cm pledge
Comma separated list of active
.Xr pledge 2
promises.
.It Cm ppid
Parent process ID.
.It Cm pri
Scheduling priority.
.It Cm procflags
The process flags (in hexadecimal), as defined in the include file
.In sys/proc.h :
.Bd -literal
PS_CONTROLT            0x1 process has a controlling
                           terminal
PS_EXEC                0x2 process called exec(3)
PS_INEXEC              0x4 process is doing an exec right
                           now
PS_EXITING             0x8 process is exiting
PS_SUGID              0x10 process had set ID privileges
                           since last exec
PS_SUGIDEXEC          0x20 last exec(3) was set[ug]id
PS_PPWAIT             0x40 parent is waiting for process
                           to exec/exit
PS_ISPWAIT            0x80 process is parent of PPWAIT
                           child
PS_PROFIL            0x100 process has started profiling
PS_TRACED            0x200 process is being traced
PS_WAITED            0x400 debugging process has waited
                           for child
PS_COREDUMP          0x800 busy coredumping
PS_SINGLEEXIT       0x1000 other threads must die
PS_SINGLEUNWIND     0x2000 other threads must unwind
PS_NOZOMBIE         0x4000 pid 1 waits for me instead of
                           dad
PS_STOPPING         0x8000 just stopped, need to send
                           SIGCHLD
PS_SYSTEM          0x10000 No signals, stats or swapping
PS_EMBRYO          0x20000 New process, not yet fledged
PS_ZOMBIE          0x40000 Dead and ready to be waited for
PS_NOBROADCASTKILL 0x80000 Process excluded from kill -1
PS_PLEDGE         0x100000 process has called pledge(2)
PS_WXNEEDED	0x00200000 process allowed to violate W^X
PS_EXECPLEDGE	0x00400000 has exec pledges
PS_ORPHAN	0x00800000 process is on an orphan list
PS_CHROOT	0x01000000 process is chrooted
PS_NOBTCFI	0x02000000 no Branch Target CFI
PS_CONTINUED    0x20000000 process continued from stopped state
                           but has not been waited for yet
PS_STOPPED      0x40000000 process is in stopped state
.Ed
.It Cm re
Core residency time (in seconds; 127 = infinity).
.It Cm rgid
Real group ID.
.It Cm rgroup
Text name of real group ID.
.It Cm rlink
Reverse link on run queue, or 0.
.It Cm rss
The real memory (resident set) size of the process (in 1024 byte units).
.It Cm rsz
Alias:
.Cm rssize .
Resident set size + (text size / text use count).
.It Cm rtable
Routing table.
.It Cm ruid
Real user ID.
.It Cm ruser
User name (from
.Cm ruid ) .
.It Cm sess
Session ID (PID of session leader).
.It Cm sig
Alias:
.Cm pending .
Pending signals.
.It Cm sigcatch
Alias:
.Cm caught .
Caught signals.
.It Cm sigignore
Alias:
.Cm ignored .
Ignored signals.
.It Cm sigmask
Alias:
.Cm blocked .
Blocked signals.
.It Cm sl
Sleep time (in seconds; 127 = infinity).
.It Cm ssiz
Stack size, in Kilobytes.
.It Cm 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 Cm state
Alias:
.Cm stat .
The state is given by a sequence of letters, for example,
.Dq RWN .
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 ) .
.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 controlling
terminal.
.It \*(Lt
The process has a raised CPU
scheduling priority (see
.Xr setpriority 2 ) .
.It \*(Gt
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 c
The process is chrooted.
.It E
The process is trying to exit.
.It K
The process is a kernel thread.
.It N
The process has a reduced CPU
scheduling priority.
.It p
The process has called
.Xr pledge 2 .
.\" .It S
.\" The process has asked for 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 U
The process has unveiled, and
.Xr unveil 2
is now locked.
.It u
The process has unveiled, but not yet locked
.Xr unveil 2
(could be a program error).
.It V
The process is suspended during a
.Xr vfork 2 .
.It X
The process is being traced or debugged.
.It / Ns Ar n
On multiprocessor machines, specifies processor number
.Ar n .
.El
.It Cm supgid
Group IDs of supplementary groups.
.It Cm supgrp
Group names of supplementary groups.
.It Cm svgid
Saved GID from a setgid executable.
.It Cm svuid
Saved UID from a setuid executable.
.It Cm tdev
Controlling terminal device number.
.It Cm tid
Thread ID.
Used together with
.Fl H .
.It Cm time
Alias:
.Cm cputime .
Accumulated CPU time, user + system.
.It Cm tpgid
Controlling terminal process group ID.
.\".It trss
.\"Text resident set size, in Kilobytes.
.It Cm tsess
Controlling terminal session pointer.
.It Cm tsiz
Text size, in Kilobytes.
.It Cm tt
An abbreviation for the pathname of the controlling terminal, if any.
The abbreviation consists of the two letters following
.Dq /dev/tty ,
or, for the console,
.Dq co .
This is followed by a
.Sq -
if the process can no longer reach that
controlling terminal (i.e. it has been revoked).
.It Cm tty
Full name of controlling terminal.
.It Cm ucomm
Alias:
.Cm comm .
Name to be used for accounting.
.It Cm uid
Effective user ID.
.It Cm upr
Alias:
.Cm usrpri .
Scheduling priority on return from system call.
.It Cm user
User name (from
.Cm uid ) .
.It Cm vsz
Alias:
.Cm vsize .
Virtual size, in Kilobytes.
.It Cm 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.
.It Cm xstat
Exit or stop status (valid only for stopped or zombie process).
.El
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
The following environment variables affect the execution of
.Nm :
.Bl -tag -width LC_CTYPE
.It Ev COLUMNS
If set to a positive integer,
output is formatted to the given width in columns.
Otherwise,
.Nm
defaults to the terminal width minus 1.
If none of
.Dv stdout ,
.Dv stderr ,
and
.Dv stdin
are a terminal,
79 columns are used.
.It Ev LC_CTYPE
The character encoding
.Xr locale 1 .
It decides which byte sequences form characters,
which characters are printable, and what their display width is.
If unset or set to
.Qq C ,
.Qq POSIX ,
or an unsupported value, only printable ASCII characters are printed.
Tabs, newlines, non-printable ASCII characters, and non-ASCII bytes
are encoded with
.Xr vis 3 .
If UTF-8 output is enabled, valid characters that are not printable
are replaced with the Unicode replacement character U+FFFD.
These rules for example apply to command names, arguments, and
environments and to directory, user, and group names.
.It Ev TZ
The time zone to use when displaying dates.
See
.Xr environ 7
for more information.
.El
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width "/var/db/kvm_bsd.dbXXX" -compact
.It Pa /dev
special files and device names
.It Pa /var/db/kvm_bsd.db
system namelist database
.It Pa /var/run/dev.db
.Pa /dev
name database
.El
.Sh EXIT STATUS
.Ex -std ps
.Sh EXAMPLES
Display information on all system processes:
.Pp
.Dl $ ps -auxw
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr fstat 1 ,
.Xr kill 1 ,
.Xr netstat 1 ,
.Xr pgrep 1 ,
.Xr pkill 1 ,
.Xr procmap 1 ,
.Xr systat 1 ,
.Xr top 1 ,
.Xr w 1 ,
.Xr kvm 3 ,
.Xr strftime 3 ,
.Xr dev_mkdb 8 ,
.Xr iostat 8 ,
.Xr pstat 8 ,
.Xr vmstat 8
.Sh STANDARDS
The
.Nm
utility is compliant with the
.St -p1003.1-2008
specification,
except that the flag
.Op Fl G
is unsupported and
the flags
.Op Fl ptU
support only single arguments, not lists.
.Pp
The flags
.Op Fl defglnu
are marked by
.St -p1003.1-2008
as being an X/Open System Interfaces option.
Of these,
.Op Fl dfgn
are not supported by this implementation of
.Nm ;
behaviour for the flags
.Op Fl elu
differs between this implementation and the
X/Open System Interfaces option of
.St -p1003.1-2008 .
.Pp
The flags
.Op Fl cfHhjkLMmNOrSTvWwx
are extensions to
.St -p1003.1-2008 .
.Pp
Only the following keywords are recognised by
.St -p1003.1-2008 :
.Cm args ,
.Cm comm ,
.Cm etime ,
.Cm group ,
.Cm nice ,
.Cm pcpu ,
.Cm pgid ,
.Cm pid ,
.Cm ppid ,
.Cm rgroup ,
.Cm ruser ,
.Cm time ,
.Cm tty ,
.Cm user ,
and
.Cm vsz .
.Sh HISTORY
A
.Nm
command first appeared in
.At v3 .
.Sh CAVEATS
When printing using the
.Cm 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 .
.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
.Cm ucomm
(accounting) keyword can, however, be depended on.
.Pp
The information displayed is only a snapshot of a constantly changing system.