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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. .\" .Dd November 11, 2023 .Dt PS 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm ps .Nd process status .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm .Op Fl -libxo .Op Fl aCcdefHhjlmrSTuvwXxZ .Op Fl O Ar fmt | Fl o Ar fmt .Op Fl D Ar up | down | both .Op Fl G Ar gid Ns Op , Ns Ar gid Ns Ar ... .Op Fl J Ar jid Ns Op , Ns Ar jid Ns Ar ... .Op Fl M Ar core .Op Fl N Ar system .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 user Ns Op , Ns Ar user Ns Ar ... .Nm .Op Fl -libxo .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. If the .Fl x options is specified, .Nm will also display processes that do not have controlling terminals. .Pp A different set of processes can be selected for display by using any combination of the .Fl a , D , G , J , 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, state, CPU time (including both user and system time) and associated command. .Pp If the .Nm process is associated with a terminal, the default output width is that of the terminal; otherwise the output width is unlimited. See also the .Fl w option. .Pp The options are as follows: .Bl -tag -width indent .It Fl -libxo Generate output via .Xr libxo 3 in a selection of different human and machine readable formats. See .Xr xo_parse_args 3 for details on command line arguments. .It Fl a Display information about other users' processes as well as your own. If the .Va security.bsd.see_other_uids sysctl is set to zero, this option is honored only if the UID of the user is 0. .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 d Arrange processes into descendancy order and prefix each command with indentation text showing sibling and parent/child relationships as a tree. If either of the .Fl m and .Fl r options are also used, they control how sibling processes are sorted relative to each other. Note that this option has no effect if the .Dq command column is not the last column displayed. .It Fl D Expand the list of selected processes based on the process tree. .Dq UP will add the ancestor processes, .Dq DOWN will add the descendant processes, and .Dq BOTH will add both the ancestor and the descendant processes. .Fl D does not imply .Fl d , but works well with it. .It Fl e Display the environment as well. .It Fl G Display information about processes which are running with the specified real group IDs. .It Fl H Show all of the threads associated with each process. .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 J Display information about processes which match the specified jail IDs. This may be either the .Cm jid or .Cm name of the jail. Use .Fl J .Sy 0 to display only host processes. This flag implies .Fl x by default. .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. The last keyword in the list may be appended with an equals .Pq Ql = sign and a string that spans the rest of the argument, and can contain space and comma characters. This causes the printed header to use the specified string instead of the standard header. Multiple keywords may also be given in the form of more than one .Fl o option. So the header texts for multiple keywords can be changed. If all keywords have empty header texts, no header line is written. .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 times, namely cputime, systime, and usertime, are 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. Full pathnames, as well as abbreviations (see explanation of the .Cm tt keyword) can be specified. .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 at least 132 columns to display information, instead of the default which is the window size if .Nm is associated with a terminal. If the .Fl w option is specified more than once, .Nm will use as many columns as necessary without regard for the window size. Note that this option has no effect if the .Dq command column is not the last column displayed. .It Fl X When displaying processes matched by other options, skip any processes which do not have a controlling terminal. This is the default behaviour. .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 .Xr mac 4 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 class Login class associated with the process. .It Cm flags The flags associated with the process as in the include file .In sys/proc.h : .Bl -column P_SINGLE_BOUNDARY 0x40000000 .It Dv "P_ADVLOCK" Ta No "0x00000001" Ta "Process may hold a POSIX advisory lock" .It Dv "P_CONTROLT" Ta No "0x00000002" Ta "Has a controlling terminal" .It Dv "P_KPROC" Ta No "0x00000004" Ta "Kernel process" .It Dv "P_PPWAIT" Ta No "0x00000010" Ta "Parent is waiting for child to exec/exit" .It Dv "P_PROFIL" Ta No "0x00000020" Ta "Has started profiling" .It Dv "P_STOPPROF" Ta No "0x00000040" Ta "Has thread in requesting to stop prof" .It Dv "P_HADTHREADS" Ta No "0x00000080" Ta "Has had threads (no cleanup shortcuts)" .It Dv "P_SUGID" Ta No "0x00000100" Ta "Had set id privileges since last exec" .It Dv "P_SYSTEM" Ta No "0x00000200" Ta "System proc: no sigs, stats or swapping" .It Dv "P_SINGLE_EXIT" Ta No "0x00000400" Ta "Threads suspending should exit, not wait" .It Dv "P_TRACED" Ta No "0x00000800" Ta "Debugged process being traced" .It Dv "P_WAITED" Ta No "0x00001000" Ta "Someone is waiting for us" .It Dv "P_WEXIT" Ta No "0x00002000" Ta "Working on exiting" .It Dv "P_EXEC" Ta No "0x00004000" Ta "Process called exec" .It Dv "P_WKILLED" Ta No "0x00008000" Ta "Killed, shall go to kernel/user boundary ASAP" .It Dv "P_CONTINUED" Ta No "0x00010000" Ta "Proc has continued from a stopped state" .It Dv "P_STOPPED_SIG" Ta No "0x00020000" Ta "Stopped due to SIGSTOP/SIGTSTP" .It Dv "P_STOPPED_TRACE" Ta No "0x00040000" Ta "Stopped because of tracing" .It Dv "P_STOPPED_SINGLE" Ta No "0x00080000" Ta "Only one thread can continue" .It Dv "P_PROTECTED" Ta No "0x00100000" Ta "Do not kill on memory overcommit" .It Dv "P_SIGEVENT" Ta No "0x00200000" Ta "Process pending signals changed" .It Dv "P_SINGLE_BOUNDARY" Ta No "0x00400000" Ta "Threads should suspend at user boundary" .It Dv "P_HWPMC" Ta No "0x00800000" Ta "Process is using HWPMCs" .It Dv "P_JAILED" Ta No "0x01000000" Ta "Process is in jail" .It Dv "P_TOTAL_STOP" Ta No "0x02000000" Ta "Stopped for system suspend" .It Dv "P_INEXEC" Ta No "0x04000000" Ta Process is in Xr execve 2 .It Dv "P_STATCHILD" Ta No "0x08000000" Ta "Child process stopped or exited" .It Dv "P_INMEM" Ta No "0x10000000" Ta "Always set, unused" .It Dv "P_PPTRACE" Ta No "0x80000000" Ta "Vforked child issued ptrace(PT_TRACEME)" .El .It Cm flags2 The flags kept in .Va p_flag2 associated with the process as in the include file .In sys/proc.h : .Bl -column P2_INHERIT_PROTECTED 0x00000001 .It Dv "P2_INHERIT_PROTECTED" Ta No "0x00000001" Ta "New children get P_PROTECTED" .It Dv "P2_NOTRACE" Ta No "0x00000002" Ta "No" Xr ptrace 2 attach or coredumps .It Dv "P2_NOTRACE_EXEC" Ta No "0x00000004" Ta Keep P2_NOPTRACE on Xr execve 2 .It Dv "P2_AST_SU" Ta No "0x00000008" Ta "Handles SU ast for kthreads" .It Dv "P2_PTRACE_FSTP" Ta No "0x00000010" Ta "SIGSTOP from PT_ATTACH not yet handled" .It Dv "P2_TRAPCAP" Ta No "0x00000020" Ta "SIGTRAP on ENOTCAPABLE" .It Dv "P2_ASLR_ENABLE" Ta No "0x00000040" Ta "Force enable ASLR" .It Dv "P2_ASLR_DISABLE" Ta No "0x00000080" Ta "Force disable ASLR" .It Dv "P2_ASLR_IGNSTART" Ta No "0x00000100" Ta "Enable ASLR to consume sbrk area" .It Dv "P2_PROTMAX_ENABLE" Ta No "0x00000200" Ta "Force enable implied PROT_MAX" .It Dv "P2_PROTMAX_DISABLE" Ta No "0x00000400" Ta "Force disable implied PROT_MAX" .It Dv "P2_STKGAP_DISABLE" Ta No "0x00000800" Ta "Disable stack gap for MAP_STACK" .It Dv "P2_STKGAP_DISABLE_EXEC" Ta No "0x00001000" Ta "Stack gap disabled after exec" .It Dv "P2_ITSTOPPED" Ta No "0x00002000" Ta "itimers stopped (as part of process stop)" .It Dv "P2_PTRACEREQ" Ta No "0x00004000" Ta "Active ptrace req" .It Dv "P2_NO_NEW_PRIVS" Ta No "0x00008000" Ta "Ignore setuid on exec" .It Dv "P2_WXORX_DISABLE" Ta No "0x00010000" Ta "WX mappings enabled" .It Dv "P2_WXORX_ENABLE_EXEC" Ta No "0x00020000" Ta "WxorX enabled after exec" .It Dv "P2_WEXIT" Ta No "0x00040000" Ta "Internal exit early state" .It Dv "P2_REAPKILLED" Ta No "0x00080000" Ta "REAP_KILL pass handled the process" .It Dv "P2_MEMBAR_PRIVE" Ta No "0x00100000" Ta "membarrier private expedited registered" .It Dv "P2_MEMBAR_PRIVE_SYNCORE" Ta No "0x00200000" Ta "membarrier private expedited sync core registered" .It Dv "P2_MEMBAR_GLOBE" Ta No "0x00400000" Ta "membar global expedited registered" .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 logname The login name associated with the session the process is in (see .Xr getlogin 2 ) . .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 %H:%M format described in .Xr strftime 3 . If the command started less than 7 days ago, the start time is displayed using the .Dq Li %a%H 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 C The process is in .Xr capsicum 4 capability mode. .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 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' parent is suspended during a .Xr vfork 2 , waiting for the process to exec or exit. .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 pseudo-terminals, the corresponding entry in .Pa /dev/pts . This is followed by a .Ql - if the process can no longer reach that controlling terminal (i.e., it has been revoked). A .Ql - without a preceding two letter abbreviation or pseudo-terminal device number indicates a process which never had a controlling terminal. The full pathname of the controlling terminal is available via the .Cm tty keyword. .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 . If the arguments cannot 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 .Nm utility first tries to obtain the arguments cached by the kernel (if they were shorter than the value of the .Va kern.ps_arg_cache_limit sysctl). The process can change the arguments shown with .Xr setproctitle 3 . Otherwise, .Nm 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. The ucomm (accounting) keyword can, however, be depended on. If the arguments are unavailable or do not agree with the ucomm keyword, the value for the ucomm keyword is appended to the arguments in parentheses. .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 class login class .It Cm comm command .It Cm command command and arguments .It Cm cow number of copy-on-write faults .It Cm cpu The processor number on which the process is executing (visible only on SMP systems). .It Cm dsiz data size (in Kbytes) .It Cm emul system-call emulation environment (ABI) .It Cm etime elapsed running time, format .Do .Op days- Ns .Op hours\&: Ns minutes:seconds .Dc .It Cm etimes elapsed running time, in decimal integer seconds .It Cm fib default FIB number, see .Xr setfib 1 .It Cm flags the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias .Cm f ) .It Cm flags2 the additional set of process flags, in hexadecimal (alias .Cm f2 ) .It Cm gid effective group ID (alias .Cm egid ) .It Cm group group name (from egid) (alias .Cm egroup ) .It Cm inblk total blocks read (alias .Cm inblock ) .It Cm jail jail name .It Cm jid jail ID .It Cm jobc job control count .It Cm ktrace tracing flags .It Cm label MAC label .It Cm lim memoryuse limit .It Cm lockname lock currently blocked on (as a symbolic name) .It Cm logname login name of user who started the session .It Cm lstart time started .It Cm lwp thread (light-weight process) ID (alias .Cm tid ) .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 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 nlwp number of threads (light-weight processes) tied to a process .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 process pointer .It Cm pagein pageins (same as majflt) .It Cm pgid process group number .It Cm pid process ID .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 rss resident set size .It Cm rtprio realtime priority (see .Xr rtprio 1) .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 ssiz stack size (in Kbytes) .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 systime accumulated system CPU time .It Cm tdaddr thread address .It Cm tdname thread name .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 tracer tracer process 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 ucomm name to be used for accounting .It Cm uid effective user ID (alias .Cm euid ) .It Cm upr scheduling priority on return from system call (alias .Cm usrpri ) .It Cm uprocp process pointer .It Cm user user name (from UID) .It Cm usertime accumulated user CPU time .It Cm vmaddr vmspace pointer .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 .Pp Note that the .Cm pending column displays bitmask of signals pending in the process queue when .Fl H option is not specified, otherwise the per-thread queue of pending signals is shown. .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 /boot/kernel/kernel default system namelist .El .Sh EXIT STATUS .Ex -std .Sh EXAMPLES Display information on all system processes: .Pp .Dl $ ps -auxw .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr kill 1 , .Xr pgrep 1 , .Xr pkill 1 , .Xr procstat 1 , .Xr w 1 , .Xr kvm 3 , .Xr libxo 3 , .Xr strftime 3 , .Xr xo_parse_args 3 , .Xr mac 4 , .Xr procfs 4 , .Xr pstat 8 , .Xr sysctl 8 , .Xr mutex 9 .Sh STANDARDS For historical reasons, the .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 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. .Pp The .Nm utility does not correctly display argument lists containing multibyte characters.