xref: /freebsd/bin/ps/ps.1 (revision 10b59a9b4add0320d52c15ce057dd697261e7dfc)
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29.\"     @(#)ps.1	8.3 (Berkeley) 4/18/94
30.\" $FreeBSD$
31.\"
32.Dd October 30, 2011
33.Dt PS 1
34.Os
35.Sh NAME
36.Nm ps
37.Nd process status
38.Sh SYNOPSIS
39.Nm
40.Op Fl aCcdefHhjlmrSTuvwXxZ
41.Op Fl O Ar fmt | Fl o Ar fmt
42.Op Fl G Ar gid Ns Op , Ns Ar gid Ns Ar ...
43.Op Fl M Ar core
44.Op Fl N Ar system
45.Op Fl p Ar pid Ns Op , Ns Ar pid Ns Ar ...
46.Op Fl t Ar tty Ns Op , Ns Ar tty Ns Ar ...
47.Op Fl U Ar user Ns Op , Ns Ar user Ns Ar ...
48.Nm
49.Op Fl L
50.Sh DESCRIPTION
51The
52.Nm
53utility
54displays a header line, followed by lines containing information about
55all of your
56processes that have controlling terminals.
57If the
58.Fl x
59options is specified,
60.Nm
61will also display processes that do not have controlling terminals.
62.Pp
63A different set of processes can be selected for display by using any
64combination of the
65.Fl a , G , p , T , t ,
66and
67.Fl U
68options.
69If more than one of these options are given, then
70.Nm
71will select all processes which are matched by at least one of the
72given options.
73.Pp
74For the processes which have been selected for display,
75.Nm
76will usually display one line per process.
77The
78.Fl H
79option may result in multiple output lines (one line per thread) for
80some processes.
81By default all of these output lines are sorted first by controlling
82terminal, then by process ID.
83The
84.Fl m , r , u ,
85and
86.Fl v
87options will change the sort order.
88If more than one sorting option was given, then the selected processes
89will be sorted by the last sorting option which was specified.
90.Pp
91For the processes which have been selected for display, the information
92to display is selected based on a set of keywords (see the
93.Fl L , O ,
94and
95.Fl o
96options).
97The default output format includes, for each process, the process' ID,
98controlling terminal, state, CPU time (including both user and system time)
99and associated command.
100.Pp
101The process file system (see
102.Xr procfs 5 )
103should be mounted when
104.Nm
105is executed, otherwise not all information will be available.
106.Pp
107The options are as follows:
108.Bl -tag -width indent
109.It Fl a
110Display information about other users' processes as well as your own.
111If the
112.Va security.bsd.see_other_uids
113sysctl is set to zero, this option is honored only if the UID of the user is 0.
114.It Fl c
115Change the
116.Dq command
117column output to just contain the executable name,
118rather than the full command line.
119.It Fl C
120Change the way the CPU percentage is calculated by using a
121.Dq raw
122CPU calculation that ignores
123.Dq resident
124time (this normally has
125no effect).
126.It Fl d
127Arrange processes into descendancy order and prefix each command with
128indentation text showing sibling and parent/child relationships.
129If either of the
130.Fl m
131and
132.Fl r
133options are also used, they control how sibling processes are sorted
134relative to each other.
135Note that this option has no effect if the
136.Dq command
137column is not the last column displayed.
138.It Fl e
139Display the environment as well.
140.It Fl f
141Show commandline and environment information about swapped out processes.
142This option is honored only if the UID of the user is 0.
143.It Fl G
144Display information about processes which are running with the specified
145real group IDs.
146.It Fl H
147Show all of the
148.Em kernel visible
149threads associated with each process.
150Depending on the threading package that
151is in use, this may show only the process, only the kernel scheduled entities,
152or all of the process threads.
153.It Fl h
154Repeat the information header as often as necessary to guarantee one
155header per page of information.
156.It Fl j
157Print information associated with the following keywords:
158.Cm user , pid , ppid , pgid , sid , jobc , state , tt , time ,
159and
160.Cm command .
161.It Fl L
162List the set of keywords available for the
163.Fl O
164and
165.Fl o
166options.
167.It Fl l
168Display information associated with the following keywords:
169.Cm uid , pid , ppid , cpu , pri , nice , vsz , rss , mwchan , state ,
170.Cm tt , time ,
171and
172.Cm command .
173.It Fl M
174Extract values associated with the name list from the specified core
175instead of the currently running system.
176.It Fl m
177Sort by memory usage, instead of the combination of controlling
178terminal and process ID.
179.It Fl N
180Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the default,
181which is the kernel image the system has booted from.
182.It Fl O
183Add the information associated with the space or comma separated list
184of keywords specified, after the process ID,
185in the default information
186display.
187Keywords may be appended with an equals
188.Pq Ql =
189sign and a string.
190This causes the printed header to use the specified string instead of
191the standard header.
192.It Fl o
193Display information associated with the space or comma separated
194list of keywords specified.
195The last keyword in the list may be appended with an equals
196.Pq Ql =
197sign and a string that spans the rest of the argument, and can contain
198space and comma characters.
199This causes the printed header to use the specified string instead of
200the standard header.
201Multiple keywords may also be given in the form of more than one
202.Fl o
203option.
204So the header texts for multiple keywords can be changed.
205If all keywords have empty header texts, no header line is written.
206.It Fl p
207Display information about processes which match the specified process IDs.
208.It Fl r
209Sort by current CPU usage, instead of the combination of controlling
210terminal and process ID.
211.It Fl S
212Change the way the process times, namely cputime, systime, and usertime,
213are calculated by summing all exited children to their parent process.
214.It Fl T
215Display information about processes attached to the device associated
216with the standard input.
217.It Fl t
218Display information about processes attached to the specified terminal
219devices.
220Full pathnames, as well as abbreviations (see explanation of the
221.Cm tt
222keyword) can be specified.
223.It Fl U
224Display the processes belonging to the specified usernames.
225.It Fl u
226Display information associated with the following keywords:
227.Cm user , pid , %cpu , %mem , vsz , rss , tt , state , start , time ,
228and
229.Cm command .
230The
231.Fl u
232option implies the
233.Fl r
234option.
235.It Fl v
236Display information associated with the following keywords:
237.Cm pid , state , time , sl , re , pagein , vsz , rss , lim , tsiz ,
238.Cm %cpu , %mem ,
239and
240.Cm command .
241The
242.Fl v
243option implies the
244.Fl m
245option.
246.It Fl w
247Use 132 columns to display information, instead of the default which
248is your window size.
249If the
250.Fl w
251option is specified more than once,
252.Nm
253will use as many columns as necessary without regard for your window size.
254Note that this option has no effect if the
255.Dq command
256column is not the last column displayed.
257.It Fl X
258When displaying processes matched by other options, skip any processes
259which do not have a controlling terminal.
260This is the default behaviour.
261.It Fl x
262When displaying processes matched by other options, include processes
263which do not have a controlling terminal.
264This is the opposite of the
265.Fl X
266option.
267If both
268.Fl X
269and
270.Fl x
271are specified in the same command, then
272.Nm
273will use the one which was specified last.
274.It Fl Z
275Add
276.Xr mac 4
277label to the list of keywords for which
278.Nm
279will display information.
280.El
281.Pp
282A complete list of the available keywords are listed below.
283Some of these keywords are further specified as follows:
284.Bl -tag -width lockname
285.It Cm %cpu
286The CPU utilization of the process; this is a decaying average over up to
287a minute of previous (real) time.
288Since the time base over which this is computed varies (since processes may
289be very young) it is possible for the sum of all
290.Cm %cpu
291fields to exceed 100%.
292.It Cm %mem
293The percentage of real memory used by this process.
294.It Cm class
295Login class associated with the process.
296.It Cm flags
297The flags associated with the process as in
298the include file
299.In sys/proc.h :
300.Bl -column P_SINGLE_BOUNDARY 0x40000000
301.It Dv "P_ADVLOCK" Ta No "0x00001	Process may hold a POSIX advisory lock"
302.It Dv "P_CONTROLT" Ta No "0x00002	Has a controlling terminal"
303.It Dv "P_KTHREAD" Ta No "0x00004	Kernel thread"
304.It Dv "P_FOLLOWFORK" Ta No "0x00008	Attach debugger to new children"
305.It Dv "P_PPWAIT" Ta No "0x00010	Parent is waiting for child to exec/exit"
306.It Dv "P_PROFIL" Ta No "0x00020	Has started profiling"
307.It Dv "P_STOPPROF" Ta No "0x00040	Has thread in requesting to stop prof"
308.It Dv "P_HADTHREADS" Ta No "0x00080	Has had threads (no cleanup shortcuts)"
309.It Dv "P_SUGID" Ta No "0x00100		Had set id privileges since last exec"
310.It Dv "P_SYSTEM" Ta No "0x00200	System proc: no sigs, stats or swapping"
311.It Dv "P_SINGLE_EXIT" Ta No "0x00400	Threads suspending should exit, not wait"
312.It Dv "P_TRACED" Ta No "0x00800	Debugged process being traced"
313.It Dv "P_WAITED" Ta No "0x01000	Someone is waiting for us"
314.It Dv "P_WEXIT" Ta No "0x02000		Working on exiting"
315.It Dv "P_EXEC" Ta No "0x04000		Process called exec"
316.It Dv "P_WKILLED" Ta No "0x08000	Killed, shall go to kernel/user boundary ASAP"
317.It Dv "P_CONTINUED" Ta No "0x10000	Proc has continued from a stopped state"
318.It Dv "P_STOPPED_SIG" Ta No "0x20000	Stopped due to SIGSTOP/SIGTSTP"
319.It Dv "P_STOPPED_TRACE" Ta No "0x40000	Stopped because of tracing"
320.It Dv "P_STOPPED_SINGLE" Ta No "0x80000	Only one thread can continue"
321.It Dv "P_PROTECTED" Ta No "0x100000	Do not kill on memory overcommit"
322.It Dv "P_SIGEVENT" Ta No "0x200000	Process pending signals changed"
323.It Dv "P_SINGLE_BOUNDARY" Ta No "0x400000	Threads should suspend at user boundary"
324.It Dv "P_HWPMC" Ta No "0x800000	Process is using HWPMCs"
325.It Dv "P_JAILED" Ta No "0x1000000	Process is in jail"
326.It Dv "P_INEXEC" Ta No "0x4000000	Process is in execve()"
327.It Dv "P_STATCHILD" Ta No "0x8000000	Child process stopped or exited"
328.It Dv "P_INMEM" Ta No "0x10000000	Loaded into memory"
329.It Dv "P_SWAPPINGOUT" Ta No "0x20000000	Process is being swapped out"
330.It Dv "P_SWAPPINGIN" Ta No "0x40000000	Process is being swapped in"
331.El
332.It Cm label
333The MAC label of the process.
334.It Cm lim
335The soft limit on memory used, specified via a call to
336.Xr setrlimit 2 .
337.It Cm lstart
338The exact time the command started, using the
339.Ql %c
340format described in
341.Xr strftime 3 .
342.It Cm lockname
343The name of the lock that the process is currently blocked on.
344If the name is invalid or unknown, then
345.Dq ???\&
346is displayed.
347.It Cm logname
348The login name associated with the session the process is in (see
349.Xr getlogin 2 ) .
350.It Cm mwchan
351The event name if the process is blocked normally, or the lock name if
352the process is blocked on a lock.
353See the wchan and lockname keywords
354for details.
355.It Cm nice
356The process scheduling increment (see
357.Xr setpriority 2 ) .
358.It Cm rss
359the real memory (resident set) size of the process (in 1024 byte units).
360.It Cm start
361The time the command started.
362If the command started less than 24 hours ago, the start time is
363displayed using the
364.Dq Li %l:ps.1p
365format described in
366.Xr strftime 3 .
367If the command started less than 7 days ago, the start time is
368displayed using the
369.Dq Li %a6.15p
370format.
371Otherwise, the start time is displayed using the
372.Dq Li %e%b%y
373format.
374.It Cm state
375The state is given by a sequence of characters, for example,
376.Dq Li RWNA .
377The first character indicates the run state of the process:
378.Pp
379.Bl -tag -width indent -compact
380.It Li D
381Marks a process in disk (or other short term, uninterruptible) wait.
382.It Li I
383Marks a process that is idle (sleeping for longer than about 20 seconds).
384.It Li L
385Marks a process that is waiting to acquire a lock.
386.It Li R
387Marks a runnable process.
388.It Li S
389Marks a process that is sleeping for less than about 20 seconds.
390.It Li T
391Marks a stopped process.
392.It Li W
393Marks an idle interrupt thread.
394.It Li Z
395Marks a dead process (a
396.Dq zombie ) .
397.El
398.Pp
399Additional characters after these, if any, indicate additional state
400information:
401.Pp
402.Bl -tag -width indent -compact
403.It Li +
404The process is in the foreground process group of its control terminal.
405.It Li <
406The process has raised CPU scheduling priority.
407.It Li E
408The process is trying to exit.
409.It Li J
410Marks a process which is in
411.Xr jail 2 .
412The hostname of the prison can be found in
413.Pa /proc/ Ns Ao Ar pid Ac Ns Pa /status .
414.It Li L
415The process has pages locked in core (for example, for raw
416.Tn I/O ) .
417.It Li N
418The process has reduced CPU scheduling priority (see
419.Xr setpriority 2 ) .
420.It Li s
421The process is a session leader.
422.It Li V
423The process is suspended during a
424.Xr vfork 2 .
425.It Li W
426The process is swapped out.
427.It Li X
428The process is being traced or debugged.
429.El
430.It Cm tt
431An abbreviation for the pathname of the controlling terminal, if any.
432The abbreviation consists of the three letters following
433.Pa /dev/tty ,
434or, for pseudo-terminals, the corresponding entry in
435.Pa /dev/pts .
436This is followed by a
437.Ql -
438if the process can no longer reach that
439controlling terminal (i.e., it has been revoked).
440A
441.Ql -
442without a preceding two letter abbreviation or pseudo-terminal device number
443indicates a process which never had a controlling terminal.
444The full pathname of the controlling terminal is available via the
445.Cm tty
446keyword.
447.It Cm wchan
448The event (an address in the system) on which a process waits.
449When printed numerically, the initial part of the address is
450trimmed off and the result is printed in hex, for example, 0x80324000 prints
451as 324000.
452.El
453.Pp
454When printing using the command keyword, a process that has exited and
455has a parent that has not yet waited for the process (in other words, a zombie)
456is listed as
457.Dq Li <defunct> ,
458and a process which is blocked while trying
459to exit is listed as
460.Dq Li <exiting> .
461If the arguments cannot be located (usually because it has not been set, as is
462the case of system processes and/or kernel threads) the command name is printed
463within square brackets.
464The
465.Nm
466utility first tries to obtain the arguments cached by the kernel (if they were
467shorter than the value of the
468.Va kern.ps_arg_cache_limit
469sysctl).
470The process can change the arguments shown with
471.Xr setproctitle 3 .
472Otherwise,
473.Nm
474makes an educated guess as to the file name and arguments given when the
475process was created by examining memory or the swap area.
476The method is inherently somewhat unreliable and in any event a process
477is entitled to destroy this information.
478The ucomm (accounting) keyword can, however, be depended on.
479If the arguments are unavailable or do not agree with the ucomm keyword,
480the value for the ucomm keyword is appended to the arguments in parentheses.
481.Sh KEYWORDS
482The following is a complete list of the available keywords and their
483meanings.
484Several of them have aliases (keywords which are synonyms).
485.Pp
486.Bl -tag -width ".Cm sigignore" -compact
487.It Cm %cpu
488percentage CPU usage (alias
489.Cm pcpu )
490.It Cm %mem
491percentage memory usage (alias
492.Cm pmem )
493.It Cm acflag
494accounting flag (alias
495.Cm acflg )
496.It Cm args
497command and arguments
498.It Cm class
499login class
500.It Cm comm
501command
502.It Cm command
503command and arguments
504.It Cm cpu
505short-term CPU usage factor (for scheduling)
506.It Cm emul
507system-call emulation environment
508.It Cm etime
509elapsed running time, format
510.Op days- Ns
511.Op hours: Ns
512minutes:seconds.
513.It Cm etimes
514elapsed running time, in decimal integer seconds
515.It Cm flags
516the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias
517.Cm f )
518.It Cm gid
519effective group ID (alias
520.Cm egid )
521.It Cm group
522group name (from egid) (alias
523.Cm egroup )
524.It Cm inblk
525total blocks read (alias
526.Cm inblock )
527.It Cm jid
528jail ID
529.It Cm jobc
530job control count
531.It Cm ktrace
532tracing flags
533.It Cm label
534MAC label
535.It Cm lim
536memoryuse limit
537.It Cm lockname
538lock currently blocked on (as a symbolic name)
539.It Cm logname
540login name of user who started the session
541.It Cm lstart
542time started
543.It Cm lwp
544process thread-id
545.It Cm majflt
546total page faults
547.It Cm minflt
548total page reclaims
549.It Cm msgrcv
550total messages received (reads from pipes/sockets)
551.It Cm msgsnd
552total messages sent (writes on pipes/sockets)
553.It Cm mwchan
554wait channel or lock currently blocked on
555.It Cm nice
556nice value (alias
557.Cm ni )
558.It Cm nivcsw
559total involuntary context switches
560.It Cm nlwp
561number of threads tied to a process
562.It Cm nsigs
563total signals taken (alias
564.Cm nsignals )
565.It Cm nswap
566total swaps in/out
567.It Cm nvcsw
568total voluntary context switches
569.It Cm nwchan
570wait channel (as an address)
571.It Cm oublk
572total blocks written (alias
573.Cm oublock )
574.It Cm paddr
575process pointer
576.It Cm pagein
577pageins (same as majflt)
578.It Cm pgid
579process group number
580.It Cm pid
581process ID
582.It Cm ppid
583parent process ID
584.It Cm pri
585scheduling priority
586.It Cm re
587core residency time (in seconds; 127 = infinity)
588.It Cm rgid
589real group ID
590.It Cm rgroup
591group name (from rgid)
592.It Cm rss
593resident set size
594.It Cm rtprio
595realtime priority (101 = not a realtime process)
596.It Cm ruid
597real user ID
598.It Cm ruser
599user name (from ruid)
600.It Cm sid
601session ID
602.It Cm sig
603pending signals (alias
604.Cm pending )
605.It Cm sigcatch
606caught signals (alias
607.Cm caught )
608.It Cm sigignore
609ignored signals (alias
610.Cm ignored )
611.It Cm sigmask
612blocked signals (alias
613.Cm blocked )
614.It Cm sl
615sleep time (in seconds; 127 = infinity)
616.It Cm start
617time started
618.It Cm state
619symbolic process state (alias
620.Cm stat )
621.It Cm svgid
622saved gid from a setgid executable
623.It Cm svuid
624saved UID from a setuid executable
625.It Cm systime
626accumulated system CPU time
627.It Cm tdaddr
628thread address
629.It Cm tdev
630control terminal device number
631.It Cm time
632accumulated CPU time, user + system (alias
633.Cm cputime )
634.It Cm tpgid
635control terminal process group ID
636.\".It Cm trss
637.\"text resident set size (in Kbytes)
638.It Cm tsid
639control terminal session ID
640.It Cm tsiz
641text size (in Kbytes)
642.It Cm tt
643control terminal name (two letter abbreviation)
644.It Cm tty
645full name of control terminal
646.It Cm ucomm
647name to be used for accounting
648.It Cm uid
649effective user ID (alias
650.Cm euid )
651.It Cm upr
652scheduling priority on return from system call (alias
653.Cm usrpri )
654.It Cm uprocp
655process pointer
656.It Cm user
657user name (from UID)
658.It Cm usertime
659accumulated user CPU time
660.It Cm vsz
661virtual size in Kbytes (alias
662.Cm vsize )
663.It Cm wchan
664wait channel (as a symbolic name)
665.It Cm xstat
666exit or stop status (valid only for stopped or zombie process)
667.El
668.Pp
669Note that the
670.Cm pending
671column displays bitmask of signals pending in the process queue when
672.Fl H
673option is not specified, otherwise the per-thread queue of pending signals
674is shown.
675.Sh ENVIRONMENT
676The following environment variables affect the execution of
677.Nm :
678.Bl -tag -width ".Ev COLUMNS"
679.It Ev COLUMNS
680If set, specifies the user's preferred output width in column positions.
681By default,
682.Nm
683attempts to automatically determine the terminal width.
684.El
685.Sh FILES
686.Bl -tag -width ".Pa /boot/kernel/kernel" -compact
687.It Pa /boot/kernel/kernel
688default system namelist
689.It Pa /proc
690the mount point of
691.Xr procfs 5
692.El
693.Sh SEE ALSO
694.Xr kill 1 ,
695.Xr pgrep 1 ,
696.Xr pkill 1 ,
697.Xr procstat 1 ,
698.Xr w 1 ,
699.Xr kvm 3 ,
700.Xr strftime 3 ,
701.Xr mac 4 ,
702.Xr procfs 5 ,
703.Xr pstat 8 ,
704.Xr sysctl 8 ,
705.Xr mutex 9
706.Sh STANDARDS
707For historical reasons, the
708.Nm
709utility under
710.Fx
711supports a different set of options from what is described by
712.St -p1003.2 ,
713and what is supported on
714.No non- Ns Bx
715operating systems.
716.Sh HISTORY
717The
718.Nm
719command appeared in
720.At v4 .
721.Sh BUGS
722Since
723.Nm
724cannot run faster than the system and is run as any other scheduled
725process, the information it displays can never be exact.
726.Pp
727The
728.Nm
729utility does not correctly display argument lists containing multibyte
730characters.
731