.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software .\" must display the following acknowledgement: .\" This product includes software developed by the University of .\" California, Berkeley and its contributors. .\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" @(#)ps.1 8.3 (Berkeley) 4/18/94 .\" $FreeBSD: src/bin/ps/ps.1,v 1.24.2.7 2002/06/20 22:43:33 charnier Exp $ .\" $DragonFly: src/bin/ps/ps.1,v 1.12 2006/05/28 23:12:09 dillon Exp $ .\" .Dd April 6, 2006 .Dt PS 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm ps .Nd process status .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm .Op Fl aCcefhjlmrSTuvwx .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 .Nm .Op Fl L .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm utility displays a header line followed by lines containing information about your processes that have controlling terminals. This information is sorted by controlling terminal, then by process ID. .Pp The information displayed 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' ID, controlling terminal, CPU time (including both user and system time), state, and associated command. .Pp The process file system (see .Xr procfs 5 ) should be mounted when .Nm is executed, otherwise not all information will be available. .Pp The options are as follows: .Bl -tag -width indent .It Fl a Display information about other users' processes as well as your own. This can be disabled by setting the .Va kern.ps_showallprocs sysctl to zero. .It Fl c Change the ``command'' column output to just contain the executable name, rather than the full command line. .It Fl C Change the way the CPU percentage is calculated by using a ``raw'' CPU calculation that ignores ``resident'' time (this normally has no effect). .It Fl e Display the environment as well. .It Fl f Show commandline and environment information about swapped out processes. This option is honored only if the uid of the user is 0. .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: .Cm user , pid , ppid , pgid , sess , jobc , state , tt , time , and .Cm command . .It Fl L List the set of available keywords. .It Fl l Display information associated with the following keywords: .Cm uid , pid , ppid , cpu , pri , nice , vsz , rss , wchan , state , .Cm tt , time , and .Cm command . .It Fl M Extract values associated with the name list from the specified core instead of the default .Pa /dev/kmem . .It Fl m Sort by memory usage, instead of by process ID. .It Fl N Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the default .Pa /kernel . .It Fl 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. .It Fl o Display information associated with the space or comma separated list of keywords specified. 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. .It Fl p Display information associated with the specified process ID. .It Fl r Sort by current CPU usage, instead of by process 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 Display information about processes attached to the specified terminal device. .It Fl U Display the processes belonging to the specified .Ar username . .It Fl u Display information associated with the following keywords: .Cm user , pid, %cpu , %mem , vsz , rss , tt , state , start , time , and .Cm command . The .Fl u option implies the .Fl r option. .It Fl v Display information associated with the following keywords: .Cm pid , state , time , sl , re , pagein , vsz , rss , lim , tsiz , .Cm %cpu , %mem and .Cm command . The .Fl v option implies the .Fl m option. .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 A complete list of the available keywords are listed below. Some of these keywords are further specified as follows: .Bl -tag -width ".Cm lstart" .It Cm %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 .Cm %cpu fields to exceed 100%. .It Cm %mem The percentage of real memory used by this process. .It Cm flags The flags associated with the process as in the include file .In sys/proc.h : .Bl -column P_BREAKTSLEEP 0x10000000 .It Dv "P_ADVLOCK" Ta No "0x00001 Process may hold a POSIX advisory lock" .It Dv "P_CONTROLT" Ta No "0x00002 Has a controlling terminal" .It Dv "P_SWAPPEDOUT" Ta No "0x00004 Swapped out of memory" .It Dv "P_BREAKTSLEEP" Ta No "0x00008 Event pending, break tsleep on sigcont" .It Dv "P_PPWAIT" Ta No "0x00010 Parent is waiting for child to exec/exit" .It Dv "P_PROFIL" Ta No "0x00020 Has started profiling" .It Dv "P_SELECT" Ta No "0x00040 Selecting; wakeup/waiting danger" .It Dv "P_SINTR" Ta No "0x00080 Sleep is interruptible" .It Dv "P_SUGID" Ta No "0x00100 Had set id privileges since last exec" .It Dv "P_SYSTEM" Ta No "0x00200 System proc: no sigs, stats or swapping" .It Dv "P_STOPPED" Ta No "0x00400 SIGSTOP status" .It Dv "P_TRACED" Ta No "0x00800 Debugged process being traced" .It Dv "P_WAITED" Ta No "0x01000 SIGSTOP status was returned by wait3/4" .It Dv "P_WEXIT" Ta No "0x02000 Working on exiting" .It Dv "P_EXEC" Ta No "0x04000 Process called exec" .It Dv "P_UPCALLPEND" Ta No "0x20000 An upcall is pending" .It Dv "P_SWAPWAIT" Ta No "0x40000 Waiting for a swapin" .It Dv "P_ZOMBIE" Ta No "0x80000 Now in a zombied state" .It Dv "P_ONRUNQ" Ta No "0x100000 On a user scheduling run queue" .It Dv "P_KTHREADP" Ta No "0x200000 Process is really a kernel thread" .It Dv "P_IDLESWAP" Ta No "0x400000 Swapout was due to idleswap, not load" .It Dv "P_DEADLKTREAT" Ta No "0x800000 Lock aquisition - deadlock treatment" .It Dv "P_JAILED" Ta No "0x1000000 Process is in jail" .It Dv "P_OLDMASK" Ta No "0x2000000 Need to restore mask before pause" .It Dv "P_ALTSTACK" Ta No "0x4000000 have alternate signal stack" .It Dv "P_INEXEC" Ta No "0x8000000 Process is in execve()" .It Dv "P_PASSIVE_ACQ" Ta No "0x10000000 Passive acquire cpu (see kern_switch)" .It Dv "P_UPCALLWAIT" Ta No "0x20000000 Wait for upcall or signal" .El .It Cm lim The soft limit on memory used, specified via a call to .Xr setrlimit 2 . .It Cm lstart The exact time the command started, using the ``%c'' format described in .Xr strftime 3 . .It Cm nice The process scheduling increment (see .Xr setpriority 2 ) . .It Cm rss the real memory (resident set) size of the process (in 1024 byte units). .It Cm 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 .Xr 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. .It Cm state The state is given by a sequence of letters, for example, .Dq Li RWNA . The first letter indicates the run state of the process: .Pp .Bl -tag -width indent -compact .It Li D Marks a process in disk (or other short term, uninterruptible) wait. .It Li I Marks a process that is idle (sleeping for longer than about 20 seconds). .It Li J Marks a process which is in .Xr jail 2 . The hostname of the prison can be found in .Pa /proc/ Ns Ao Ar pid Ac Ns Pa /status . .It Li R Marks a runnable process. .It Li S Marks a process that is sleeping for less than about 20 seconds. .It Li T Marks a stopped process. .It Li 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 Li + The process is in the foreground process group of its control terminal. .It Li < The process has raised CPU scheduling priority. .It Li > The process has specified a soft limit on memory requirements and is currently exceeding that limit; such a process is (necessarily) not swapped. .It Li 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 Li E The process is trying to exit. .It Li L The process has pages locked in core (for example, for raw .Tn I/O ) . .It Li M On SMP systems indicates a process or thread which is .Em not holding the MP lock (the Big Giant Lock). .It Li N The process has reduced CPU scheduling priority (see .Xr setpriority 2 ) . .It Li 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 Li s The process is a session leader. .It Li V The process is suspended during a .Xr vfork 2 . .It Li W The process is swapped out. .It Li X The process is being traced or debugged. .El .It Cm tt An abbreviation for the pathname of the controlling terminal, if any. The abbreviation consists of the three letters following .Pa /dev/tty , or, for the console, ``con''. This is followed by a ``-'' if the process can no longer reach that controlling terminal (i.e., it has been revoked). .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. .El .Pp 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 ``'', and a process which is blocked while trying to exit is listed as ``''. The .Nm utility 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. .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 ".Cm sigignore" -compact .It Cm %cpu percentage CPU usage (alias .Cm pcpu ) .It Cm %mem percentage memory usage (alias .Cm pmem ) .It Cm acflag accounting flag (alias .Cm acflg ) .It Cm batch batchness of the process (higher numbers mean less interactivity) .It Cm command command and arguments .It Cm cpu short-term CPU usage factor (for scheduling) .It Cm f the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias .Cm flags ) .It Cm inblk total blocks read (alias .Cm inblock ) .It Cm jail jail ID .It Cm jobc job control count .It Cm ktrace tracing flags .It Cm ktracep tracing vnode .It Cm lastcpu CPU ID the process was last scheduled on .It Cm lim memoryuse limit .It Cm login login name of user who started the process (alias .Cm logname ) .It Cm lstart time started .It Cm majflt total page faults .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 nice value (alias .Cm ni ) .It Cm nivcsw total involuntary context switches .It Cm nsigs total signals taken (alias .Cm nsignals ) .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 total blocks written (alias .Cm oublock ) .It Cm p_ru resource usage (valid only for zombie) .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 ppid parent process ID .It Cm pri scheduling priority (lower == better) .It Cm re core residency time (in seconds; 127 = infinity) .It Cm rgid real group ID .It Cm rlink reverse link on run queue, or 0 .It Cm rss resident set size .It Cm rsz resident set size + (text size / text use count) (alias .Cm rssize ) .It Cm rtprio realtime priority (101 = not a realtime process) .It Cm ruid real user ID .It Cm ruser user name (from ruid) .It Cm sess session pointer .It Cm sig pending signals (alias .Cm pending ) .It Cm sigcatch caught signals (alias .Cm caught ) .It Cm sigignore ignored signals (alias .Cm ignored ) .It Cm sigmask blocked signals (alias .Cm blocked ) .It Cm sl sleep time (in seconds; 127 = infinity) .It Cm start time started .It Cm state symbolic process state (alias .Cm stat ) .It Cm svgid saved gid from a setgid executable .It Cm svuid saved uid from a setuid executable .It Cm tdev control terminal device number .It Cm tdpri LWKT thread priority (0-31, 31 highest), and critical section count .It Cm time accumulated CPU time, user + system (alias .Cm cputime ) .It Cm tpgid control terminal process group ID .\".It Cm trss .\"text resident set size (in Kbytes) .It Cm tsess control terminal session pointer .It Cm tsiz text size (in Kbytes) .It Cm tt control terminal name (two letter abbreviation) .It Cm tty full name of control terminal .It Cm ucomm name to be used for accounting .It Cm uid effective user ID .It Cm user user name (from uid) .It Cm vsz virtual size in Kbytes (alias .Cm vsize ) .It Cm wchan wait channel (as a symbolic name) .It Cm xstat exit or stop status (valid only for stopped or zombie process) .El .Sh FILES .Bl -tag -width /var/db/kvm_kernel.db -compact .It Pa /dev/kmem default kernel memory .It Pa /var/run/dev.db /dev name database .It Pa /var/db/kvm_kernel.db system namelist database .It Pa /kernel default system namelist .It Pa /proc the mount point of .Xr procfs 5 .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr kill 1 , .Xr w 1 , .Xr kvm 3 , .Xr strftime 3 , .Xr procfs 5 , .Xr pstat 8 , .Xr sysctl 8 .Sh HISTORY The .Nm command appeared in .At v4 . .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.