bin/ps/ps.1

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.\"     @(#)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 $
.\"
.Dd January 1, 2021
.Dt PS 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm ps
.Nd process status
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl AaCcefHhjlmrRSTuvwx
.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 security.ps_showallprocs
sysctl to zero.
.It Fl A
Same as
.Fl ax .
.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
Print one line per lightweight process (LWP) instead of one line per process.
When this option is set and the
.Fl o
option is not set, the
.Cm tid
column is inserted in the output format after the
.Cm pid
one.
.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 /boot/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 R
Subsort by parent/child chain.  This very useful option makes
the parent/child associations clear and understandable.
If used in combination with
.Fl p
then all children of the specified process will be output
recursively in addition to the process itself.
.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 .
.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 B
Marks a blocked kernel thread.
.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 and is followed by the CPU number.
.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 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.  Note that blocked threads often only have ascii wchan's.
.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 ``<defunct>'', and a process which is blocked while trying
to exit is listed as ``<exiting>''.
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 (alias
.Cm args )
.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 nlwp
number of lightweight processes
.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 tid
thread ID (aka lightweight process ID)
.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 tsig
pending thread signals
.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 (alias
.Cm comm )
.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 ".Pa /boot/kernel/kernel" -compact
.It Pa /dev/kmem
default kernel memory
.It Pa /boot/kernel/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 v3
in section 8 of the manual.
.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.