ps(1)
- NetBSD Manual Pages
PS(1) NetBSD Reference Manual PS(1)
NAME
ps - process status
SYNOPSIS
ps [-acCehjKlmrSTuvwx] [-M core] [-N system] [-O fmt] [-o fmt] [-p pid]
[-t tty] [-U username] [-W swap]
ps [-L]
DESCRIPTION
ps displays a header line followed by lines containing information about
your processes that have controlling terminals. This information is
sorted by controlling terminal and (among processes with the same con-
trolling terminal) by process ID.
The information displayed is selected based on a set of keywords (see the
-L -O and -o options). The default output format includes, for each pro-
cess, the process' ID, controlling terminal, cpu time (including both us-
er and system time), state, and associated command.
The options are as follows:
-a Display information about other users' processes as well as your
own.
-c Do not display full command with arguments, but only the exe-
cutable name. This may be somewhat confusing; for example, all
sh(1) scripts will show as ``sh''.
-C Change the way the cpu percentage is calculated by using a
``raw'' cpu calculation that ignores ``resident'' time (this nor-
mally has no effect).
-e Display the environment as well. The environment for other
users' processes can only be displayed by the super-user.
-h Repeat the information header as often as necessary to guarantee
one header per page of information.
-j Print information associated with the following keywords: user,
pid, ppid, pgid, sess, jobc, state, tt, time, and command.
-K Disable the fallback /proc-based method. Note that the /proc-
based method is only used if the ordinary kvm method is not pos-
sible. See below for more details.
-L List the set of available keywords.
-l Display information associated with the following keywords: uid,
pid, ppid, cpu, pri, nice, vsz, rss, wchan, state, tt, time, and
command.
-M Extract values associated with the name list from the specified
core instead of the default ``/dev/kmem''. The -M option implies
the -K option.
-m Sort by memory usage, instead of by process ID.
-N Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the
default ``/netbsd''.
-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. 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.
-p Display information associated with the specified process ID.
-r Sort by current cpu usage, instead of by process ID.
-S Change the way the process time is calculated by summing all ex-
ited children to their parent process.
-T Display information about processes attached to the device asso-
ciated with the standard input.
-t Display information about processes attached to the specified
terminal device. Use an question mark (``?'') for processes not
attached to a terminal device and a minus sign (``-'') for pro-
cesses that have been revoked from their terminal device.
-U Displays processes belonging to the user whose username or uid
has been given to the -U switch.
-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.
-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 Extract swap information from the specified file instead of the
default ``/dev/drum''.
-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 re-
gard for your window size.
-x Also display information about processes without controlling ter-
minals.
If ps is unable to extract process information directly from the kernel
(e.g., due to an incorrect -N option or kvm-based reasons), it currently
uses an experimental fallback method to gather as much information as
possible through the limited ``/proc'' interface, if the ``/proc''
filesystem is mounted. See mount_procfs(8) for more details. ps veri-
fies that ``/proc'' is a procfs filesystem before proceeding. This ex-
perimental fallback method will change in future releases. The -K option
disables this fallback /proc-based lookup.
A complete list of the available keywords are listed 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 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 %CPU fields to exceed
100%.
%mem The percentage of real memory used by this process.
flags The flags (in hexadecimal) associated with the process as in the
include file <sys/proc.h>:
P_ADVLOCK 0x0000001 process may hold a POSIX advisory
lock
P_CONTROLT 0x0000002 process has a controlling terminal
P_INMEM 0x0000004 process is loaded into memory
P_NOCLDSTOP 0x0000008 no SIGCHLD when children stop
P_PPWAIT 0x0000010 parent is waiting for child to
exec/exit
P_PROFIL 0x0000020 process has started profiling
P_SELECT 0x0000040 selecting; wakeup/waiting danger
P_SINTR 0x0000080 sleep is interruptible
P_SUGID 0x0000100 process had set id privileges since
last exec
P_SYSTEM 0x0000200 system process: no sigs, stats or
swapping
P_TIMEOUT 0x0000400 timing out during sleep
P_TRACED 0x0000800 process is being traced
P_WAITED 0x0001000 debugging process has waited for
child
P_WEXIT 0x0002000 working on exiting
P_EXEC 0x0004000 process called execve(2)
P_OWEUPC 0x0008000 owe process an addupc() call at
next ast
P_FSTRACE 0x0010000 tracing via file system
P_NOCLDWAIT 0x0020000 no zombies when children die
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 de-
scribed 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:%M%p''
format described in strftime(3). If the command started less
than 7 days ago, the start time is displayed using the ``%a%p''
format. Otherwise, the start time is displayed using the
``%e%b%y'' format.
state The state is given by a sequence of letters, for example,
``RWNA''. The first letter indicates the run state of the pro-
cess:
D Marks a process in disk (or other short term, uninter-
ruptible) wait.
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.
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 require-
ments and is currently exceeding that limit; such a pro-
cess is (necessarily) not swapped.
A the process has asked for random page replacement
(VA_ANOM, from madvise(2), for example, a LISP inter-
preter in a garbage collect).
E The process is trying to exit.
K The process is a kernel thread or system process.
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 madvise(2), for example, a large image processing
program using virtual memory to sequentially address vo-
luminous 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 consists of the two letters following
``/dev/tty'', or, for the console, ``co''. This is followed by a
``-'' if the process can no longer reach that controlling termi-
nal (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>''.
ps 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 re-
liable because a process is allowed to destroy this information. The
ucomm (accounting) keyword will always contain the real command name as
contained in the process structure's p_comm field.
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 com-
mand name is printed within square brackets.
To indicate that the argument vector has been tampered with, ps will ap-
pend the real command name to the output within parentheses if the base-
name of the first argument in the argument vector does not match the con-
tents of the real command name.
In addition, ps checks for the following two situations and does not ap-
pend the real command name parenthesized:
-shellname
The login process traditionally adds a `-' in front of the shell
name to indicate a login shell. ps will not append parenthesized
the command name if it matches with the name in the the first ar-
gument of the argument vector, skipping the leading `-'.
daemonname: current-activity
Daemon processes frequently report their current activity by set-
ting their name to be like ``daemonname: current-activity''. ps
will not append parenthesized the command name, if the string
preceding the `:' in the first argument of the argument vector
matches the command name.
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)
command command and arguments
cpu short-term cpu usage factor (for scheduling)
flags the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias f)
inblk total blocks read (alias inblock)
jobc job control count
holdcnt number of holds on the process (if non-zero, process can't be
swapped)
ktrace tracing flags
ktracep tracing vnode
lim memoryuse limit
logname login name of user who started the process
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 kernel virtual address of the struct proc belonging to the
process.
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
rlink reverse link on run queue, or 0
rss resident set size
rsz resident set size + (text size / text use count) (alias rs-
size)
ruid real user ID
ruser user name (from ruid)
sess session pointer
sig pending signals (alias pending)
sigcatch caught signals (alias caught)
sigignore ignored signals (alias ignored)
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 pointer
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)
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)
FILES
/dev special files and device names
/dev/drum default swap device
/dev/kmem default kernel memory
/var/run/dev.db
/dev name database
/var/db/kvm.db system namelist database
/netbsd default system namelist
/proc filesystem for obtaining process information
SEE ALSO
kill(1), pgrep(1), pkill(1), sh(1), w(1), kvm(3), strftime(3),
mount_procfs(8), pstat(8)
BUGS
Since ps cannot run faster than the system and is run as any other sched-
uled process, the information it displays can never be exact.
NetBSD 1.6 April 18, 1994 6
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