.\" 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. .\" 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 .\" $FreeBSD$ .\" .Dd March 27, 2004 .Dt PS 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm ps .Nd process status .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm .Op Fl aCcefHhjlmrSTuvwXxZ .Op Fl G Ar gid Ns Op , Ns Ar gid Ns Ar ... .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 Ns Op , Ns Ar pid Ns Ar ... .Op Fl t Ar tty Ns Op , Ns Ar tty Ns Ar ... .Op Fl U Ar username Ns Op , Ns Ar username Ns Ar ... .Nm .Op Fl L .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm utility displays a header line, followed by lines containing information about all of your processes that have controlling terminals. .Pp A different set of processes can be selected for display by using any combination of the .Fl a , G , p , T , t , and .Fl U options. If more than one of these options are given, then .Nm will select all processes which are matched by at least one of the given options. .Pp For the processes which have been selected for display, .Nm will usually display one line per process. The .Fl H option may result in multiple output 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 .Fl m , r , u , and .Fl 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. .Pp For the processes which have been selected for display, the information to display is selected based on a set of keywords (see the .Fl L , 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 will skip any processes which do not have a controlling teminal, unless the .Fl x option is also specified. This can be disabled by setting the .Va security.bsd.see_other_uids sysctl to zero. .It Fl c Change the .Dq 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 .Dq raw CPU calculation that ignores .Dq 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 G Display information about processes which are running with the specified real group IDs. .It Fl H Show all of the .Em kernel visible threads associated with each process. Depending on the threading package that is in use, this may show only the process, only the kernel scheduled entities, or all of the process threads. .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 , sid , jobc , state , tt , time , and .Cm command . .It Fl L List the set of keywords available for the .Fl O and .Fl o options. .It Fl l Display information associated with the following keywords: .Cm uid , pid , ppid , cpu , pri , nice , vsz , rss , mwchan , state , .Cm tt , time , and .Cm command . .It Fl M Extract values associated with the name list from the specified core instead of the currently running system. .It Fl m Sort by memory usage, instead of the combination of controlling terminal and process ID. .It Fl N Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the default, which is the kernel image the system has booted from. .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 .Pq Ql = 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. Multiple keywords may also be given in the form of more than one .Fl o option. Keywords may be appended with an equals .Pq Ql = sign and a string. This causes the printed header to use the specified string instead of the standard header. .It Fl p Display information about processes which match the specified process IDs. .It Fl r Sort by current CPU usage, instead of the combination of controlling terminal and 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 devices. .It Fl U Display the processes belonging to the specified usernames. .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 When displaying processes matched by other options, skip any processes which do not have a controlling terminal. .It Fl x When displaying processes matched by other options, include processes which do not have a controlling terminal. This is the opposite of the .Fl X option. If both .Fl X and .Fl x are specified in the same command, then .Nm will use the one which was specified last. .It Fl Z Add label to the list of keywords for which .Nm will display information. .El .Pp A complete list of the available keywords are listed below. Some of these keywords are further specified as follows: .Bl -tag -width lockname .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_STOPPED_SINGLE 0x4000000 .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_KTHREAD" Ta No "0x00004 Kernel thread" .It Dv "P_NOLOAD" Ta No "0x00008 Ignore during load avg calculations" .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_STOPPROF" Ta No "0x00040 Has thread in requesting to stop prof" .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_SINGLE_EXIT" Ta No "0x00400 Threads suspending should exit, not wait" .It Dv "P_TRACED" Ta No "0x00800 Debugged process being traced" .It Dv "P_WAITED" Ta No "0x01000 Someone is waiting for us" .It Dv "P_WEXIT" Ta No "0x02000 Working on exiting" .It Dv "P_EXEC" Ta No "0x04000 Process called exec" .It Dv "P_SA" Ta No "0x08000 Using scheduler activations" .It Dv "P_CONTINUED" Ta No "0x10000 Proc has continued from a stopped state" .It Dv "P_STOPPED_SIG" Ta No "0x20000 Stopped due to SIGSTOP/SIGTSTP" .It Dv "P_STOPPED_TRACE" Ta No "0x40000 Stopped because of tracing" .It Dv "P_STOPPED_SINGLE" Ta No "0x80000 Only one thread can continue" .It Dv "P_PROTECTED" Ta No "0x100000 Do not kill on memory overcommit" .It Dv "P_SIGEVENT" Ta No "0x200000 Process pending signals changed" .It Dv "P_JAILED" Ta No "0x1000000 Process is in jail" .It Dv "P_INEXEC" Ta No "0x4000000 Process is in execve()" .El .It Cm label The MAC label of the process. .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 .Ql %c format described in .Xr strftime 3 . .It Cm lockname The name of the lock that the process is currently blocked on. If the name is invalid or unknown, then .Dq ???\& is displayed. .It Cm 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. .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 .Dq Li %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 .Dq Li %a6.15p format. Otherwise, the start time is displayed using the .Dq Li %e%b%y format. .It Cm state The state is given by a sequence of characters, for example, .Dq Li RWNA . The first character 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 L Marks a process that is waiting to acquire a lock. .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 W Marks an idle interrupt thread. .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 E The process is trying to exit. .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 L The process has pages locked in core (for example, for raw .Tn I/O ) . .It Li N The process has reduced CPU scheduling priority (see .Xr setpriority 2 ) . .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, .Dq Li con . This is followed by a .Ql - 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 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 .Dq Li , and a process which is blocked while trying to exit is listed as .Dq Li . 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 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 args command and arguments .It Cm comm command .It Cm command command and arguments .It Cm cpu short-term CPU usage factor (for scheduling) .It Cm etime elapsed running time .It Cm flags the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias .Cm f ) .It Cm inblk total blocks read (alias .Cm inblock ) .It Cm jobc job control count .It Cm ktrace tracing flags .It Cm label MAC label .It Cm lim memoryuse limit .It Cm logname login name of user who started the process .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 lockname lock currently blocked on (as a symbolic name) .It Cm mwchan wait channel or lock currently blocked on .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 paddr swap address .It Cm pagein pageins (same as majflt) .It Cm pgid process group number .It Cm pid process ID .It Cm poip pageouts in progress .It Cm ppid parent process ID .It Cm pri scheduling priority .It Cm re core residency time (in seconds; 127 = infinity) .It Cm rgid real group ID .It Cm rgroup group name (from rgid) .It Cm rlink reverse link on run queue, or 0 .It Cm rss resident set size .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 sid session ID .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 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 tsid control terminal session ID .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 uprocp process pointer .It Cm ucomm name to be used for accounting .It Cm uid effective user ID .It Cm upr scheduling priority on return from system call (alias .Cm usrpri ) .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 ENVIRONMENT The following environment variables affect the execution of .Nm : .Bl -tag -width ".Ev COLUMNS" .It Ev COLUMNS If set, specifies the user's preferred output width in column positions. By default, .Nm attempts to automatically determine the terminal width. .El .Sh FILES .Bl -tag -width ".Pa /boot/kernel/kernel" -compact .It Pa /dev/lomac interface used to query the .Xr lomac 4 KLD .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 pgrep 1 , .Xr pkill 1 , .Xr w 1 , .Xr kvm 3 , .Xr strftime 3 , .Xr lomac 4 , .Xr procfs 5 , .Xr pstat 8 , .Xr sysctl 8 , .Xr mutex 9 .Sh STANDARDS For historical reasons, .Nm utility under .Fx supports a different set of options from what is described by .St -p1003.2 , and what is supported on .No non- Ns Bx operating systems. .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. .Pp The .Nm utility does not correctly display argument lists containing multibyte characters.