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] [-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. -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''. -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. -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 incorrect -M or -N options or kvm-based reasons), it cur- rently 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_SSTEP 0x0020000 process needs single-step fixup 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. 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 makes an educated guess as to the file name and arguments given when the process was created by ex- amining memory or the swap area. The method is inherently somewhat unre- liable and in any event a process is entitled to destroy this informa- tion, so the names cannot be depended on too much. The ucomm (account- ing) keyword can, however, be depended on.
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 swap address pagein pageins (same as majflt) pgid process group number pid process ID poip pageouts in progress 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_netbsd.db system namelist database /netbsd default system namelist /proc filesystem for obtaining process information
SEE ALSO
kill(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 1.4 April 18, 1994 5
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