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ps(1)

NAME

     ps -- process status

SYNOPSIS

     ps [-aCcefHhjlmrSTuvwXxZ] [-O fmt | -o fmt] [-G gid[,gid...]] [-M core]
	[-N system] [-p pid[,pid...]] [-t tty[,tty...]] [-U user[,user...]]
     ps [-L]

DESCRIPTION

     The ps utility displays a header line, followed by lines containing
     information about all of your processes that have controlling terminals.

     A different set of processes can be selected for display by using any
     combination of the -a, -G, -p, -T, -t, and -U options.  If more than one
     of these options are given, then ps will select all processes which are
     matched by at least one of the given options.

     For the processes which have been selected for display, ps will usually
     display one line per process.  The -H option may result in multiple out-
     put lines (one line per thread) for some processes.  By default all of
     these output lines are sorted first by controlling terminal, then by
     process ID.  The -m, -r, -u, and -v options will change the sort order.
     If more than one sorting option was given, then the selected processes
     will be sorted by the last sorting option which was specified.

     For the processes which have been selected for display, the information
     to display is selected based on a set of keywords (see the -L, -O, and -o
     options).	The default output format includes, for each process, the
     process' ID, controlling terminal, CPU time (including both user and sys-
     tem time), state, and associated command.

     The process file system (see procfs(5)) should be mounted when ps is exe-
     cuted, otherwise not all information will be available.

     The options are as follows:

     -a      Display information about other users' processes as well as your
	     own.  This will skip any processes which do not have a control-
	     ling terminal, unless the -x option is also specified.  This can
	     be disabled by setting the security.bsd.see_other_uids sysctl to
	     zero.

     -c      Change the ``command'' column output to just contain the exe-
	     cutable name, rather than the full command line.

     -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.

     -f      Show commandline and environment information about swapped out
	     processes.  This option is honored only if the UID of the user is
	     0.

     -G      Display information about processes which are running with the
	     specified real group IDs.

     -j      Print information associated with the following keywords: user,
	     pid, ppid, pgid, sid, jobc, state, tt, time, and command.

     -L      List the set of keywords available for the -O and -o options.

     -l      Display information associated with the following keywords: uid,
	     pid, ppid, cpu, pri, nice, vsz, rss, mwchan, state, tt, time, and
	     command.

     -M      Extract values associated with the name list from the specified
	     core instead of the currently running system.

     -m      Sort by memory usage, instead of the combination of controlling
	     terminal and process ID.

     -N      Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the
	     default, which is the kernel image the system has booted from.

     -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.  Multiple keywords may also be given
	     in the form of more than one -o option.  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 about processes which match the specified
	     process IDs.

     -r      Sort by current CPU usage, instead of the combination of control-
	     ling terminal and process ID.

     -S      Change the way the process time is calculated by summing all
	     exited 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 devices.

     -U      Display the processes belonging to the specified usernames.

     -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      Use 132 columns to display information, instead of the default
	     cesses which do not have a controlling terminal.  This is the
	     opposite of the -X option.  If both -X and -x are specified in
	     the same command, then ps will use the one which was specified
	     last.

     -Z      Add mac(4) label to the list of keywords for which ps will dis-
	     play information.

     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 associated with the process as in the include file
	       <sys/proc.h>:

	       P_ADVLOCK	   0x00001	Process may hold a POSIX
						advisory lock
	       P_CONTROLT	   0x00002	Has a controlling terminal
	       P_KTHREAD	   0x00004	Kernel thread
	       P_NOLOAD 	   0x00008	Ignore during load avg
						calculations
	       P_PPWAIT 	   0x00010	Parent is waiting for child to
						exec/exit
	       P_PROFIL 	   0x00020	Has started profiling
	       P_STOPPROF	   0x00040	Has thread in requesting to
						stop prof
	       P_SUGID		   0x00100	Had set id privileges since
						last exec
	       P_SYSTEM 	   0x00200	System proc: no sigs, stats or
						swapping
	       P_SINGLE_EXIT	   0x00400	Threads suspending should
						exit, not wait
	       P_TRACED 	   0x00800	Debugged process being traced
	       P_WAITED 	   0x01000	Someone is waiting for us
	       P_WEXIT		   0x02000	Working on exiting
	       P_EXEC		   0x04000	Process called exec
	       P_SA		   0x08000	Using scheduler activations
	       P_CONTINUED	   0x10000	Proc has continued from a
						stopped state
	       P_STOPPED_SIG	   0x20000	Stopped due to SIGSTOP/SIGTSTP
	       P_STOPPED_TRACE	   0x40000	Stopped because of tracing
	       P_STOPPED_SINGLE    0x80000	Only one thread can continue
	       P_PROTECTED	   0x100000	Do not kill on memory
						overcommit
	       P_SIGEVENT	   0x200000	Process pending signals
						changed
	       P_JAILED 	   0x1000000	Process is in jail
	       P_INEXEC 	   0x4000000	Process is in execve()

     label     The MAC label of the process.


     mwchan    The event name if the process is blocked normally, or the lock
	       name if the process is blocked on a lock.  See the wchan and
	       lockname keywords for details.

     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:ps.1p'' format described in 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.

     state     The state is given by a sequence of characters, for example,
	       ``RWNA''.  The first character indicates the run state of the
	       process:

	       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).
	       L       Marks a process that is waiting to acquire a lock.
	       R       Marks a runnable process.
	       S       Marks a process that is sleeping for less than about 20
		       seconds.
	       T       Marks a stopped process.
	       W       Marks an idle interrupt thread.
	       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.
	       E       The process is trying to exit.
	       J       Marks a process which is in jail(2).  The hostname of
		       the prison can be found in /proc/<pid>/status.
	       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 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 three letters follow-
	       ing /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).

     wchan     The event (an address in the system) on which a process waits.
     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.  The ps 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 ucomm (accounting) keyword can, how-
     ever, 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)
     args	command and arguments
     comm	command
     command	command and arguments
     cpu	short-term CPU usage factor (for scheduling)
     etime	elapsed running time
     flags	the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias f)
     inblk	total blocks read (alias inblock)
     jobc	job control count
     ktrace	tracing flags
     label	MAC label
     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)
     lockname	lock currently blocked on (as a symbolic name)
     mwchan	wait channel or lock currently blocked on
     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)
     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
     rgroup	group name (from rgid)
     rlink	reverse link on run queue, or 0
     rss	resident set size
     rtprio	realtime priority (101 = not a realtime process)
     ruid	real user ID
     ruser	user name (from ruid)
     sid	session ID
     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
     tsid	control terminal session ID
     tsiz	text size (in Kbytes)
     tt 	control terminal name (two letter abbreviation)
     tty	full name of control terminal
     uprocp	process pointer
     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)

ENVIRONMENT

     The following environment variables affect the execution of ps:

     COLUMNS  If set, specifies the user's preferred output width in column
	      positions.  By default, ps attempts to automatically determine
	      the terminal width.

FILES

     /boot/kernel/kernel  default system namelist
     /proc		  the mount point of procfs(5)

SEE ALSO

     kill(1), pgrep(1), pkill(1), w(1), kvm(3), strftime(3), mac(4),
     procfs(5), pstat(8), sysctl(8), mutex(9)

STANDARDS

     For historical reasons, ps utility under FreeBSD supports a different set
     of options from what is described by IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2''), and
     what is supported on non-BSD operating systems.

HISTORY

     The ps command appeared in Version 4 AT&T UNIX.

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.

     The ps utility does not correctly display argument lists containing
     multibyte characters.

FreeBSD 5.4			March 27, 2004			   FreeBSD 5.4

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