bin/ps/ps.1

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.Dd July 16, 2025
.Dt PS 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm ps
.Nd process status
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl -libxo
.Op Fl AaCcdefHhjlmrSTuvwXxZ
.Op Fl O Ar fmt
.Op 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 information about a selection of processes.
Its traditional text style output consists of a header line followed by one line
of information per selected process, or possibly multiple ones if using
.Fl H
.Pq one per lightweight-process .
Other output styles can be requested via
.Fl -libxo .
.Pp
By default, only the processes of the calling user, determined by matching their
effective user ID with that of the
.Nm
process, that have controlling terminals are shown.
A different set of processes can be selected for display by using combinations
of the
.Fl A , a , D , G , J , p , T , t , U , X ,
and
.Fl x
options.
Except for options
.Fl X
and
.Fl x ,
as soon as one of them appears, it inhibits the default process selection, i.e.,
the calling user's processes are shown only on request.
If more than one of these
.Pq with same exceptions
appear,
.Nm
will select processes as soon as they are matched by at least one of them
.Pq inclusive OR .
The
.Fl X
option can be independently used to further filter the listed processes to only
those that have a controlling terminal
.Po
except for those selected by
.Fl p
.Pc .
Its opposite,
.Fl x ,
forcefully removes that filter.
If none of
.Fl X
and
.Fl x
is specified, the implied default behavior is that of
.Fl X
unless using another option whose description explicitly says that
.Fl x
is implied.
.Pp
For each selected process, the default displayed information consists of the
process' ID, controlling terminal, state, CPU time
.Pq including both user and system time
and associated command
.Po
see the documentation for the
.Cm command
keyword below
.Pc .
This information can be tweaked using two groups of options which can be
combined as needed.
First, options
.Fl o
and
.Fl O
add columns with data corresponding to the explicitly passed keywords.
Available keywords are documented in the
.Sx KEYWORDS
section below.
They can be listed using option
.Fl L .
Second, options
.Fl j , l , u ,
and
.Fl v
designate specific predefined groups of columns, also called canned displays.
Appearance of any of these options inhibits the default display, replacing it
all with the requested columns, and in the order options are passed.
The individual columns requested via a canned display option that have the same
keyword or an alias to that of some column added by an earlier canned display
option, or by an explicit
.Fl O
or
.Fl o
option anywhere on the command line, are suppressed.
This automatic removal of duplicate data in canned displays is useful for
slightly tweaking these displays and/or combining multiple ones without having
to rebuild variants from scratch, e.g., using only
.Fl o
options.
.Pp
Output information lines are by default sorted first by controlling terminal,
then by process ID, and then, if
.Fl H
has been specified, by lightweight-process (thread) 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
If the traditional text output (the default) is used, the default output width is that requested by the
.Ev COLUMNS
environment variable if present, else the line width of the terminal associated
to the
.Nm
process, if any.
In all other situations, the output width is unlimited.
See also the
.Fl w
option and the
.Sx BUGS
section.
.Pp
For backwards compatibility,
.Nm
attempts to interpret any positional argument as a process ID, as if specified
by the
.Fl p
option.
Failure to do so will trigger an error.
.Nm
also accepts the old-style BSD options, whose format and effect are left
undocumented on purpose.
.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_options 7
for details on command line arguments.
The default is the traditional text style output.
.It Fl A
Display information about all processes in the system.
Using this option is strictly equivalent to specifying both
.Fl a
and
.Fl x .
Please see their description for more information.
.It Fl a
Display information about all users' processes.
It does not, however, list all processes
.Po
see
.Fl A
and
.Fl x
.Pc .
If the
.Va security.bsd.see_other_uids
sysctl is set to zero, this option is honored only if the real user ID of the
.Nm
process is 0.
.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 c
Change the
.Dq command
column output to just contain the executable name,
rather than the full command line.
.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 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 last column does not have
.Cm comm ,
.Cm command
or
.Cm ucomm
as its keyword.
.It Fl e
Display the environment as well.
.It Fl f
Indicates to print the full command and arguments in
.Cm command
columns.
This is the default behavior on
.Fx .
See
.Fl c
to turn it off.
.It Fl G
Display information about processes whose real group ID matches the specified
group IDs or names.
Implies
.Fl x
by default.
.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
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 request display of host processes.
Implies
.Fl x
by default.
.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
Save passed columns in a separate list that in the end is grafted just after the
display's first occurence of the process ID column as specified by other
options, or the default display if there is none.
If the display prepared by other options does not include a process ID column,
the list is inserted at start of the display.
Further occurences of
.Fl O
append to the to-be-grafted list of columns.
This option takes a space- or comma-separated list of keywords.
The last keyword in the list may be appended with an equals sign
.Pq Ql =
as explained for option
.Fl o
and with the same effect.
.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 sign
.Pq Ql =
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.
Processes selected by this option are not subject to being filtered by
.Fl X .
.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.
Implies
.Fl x
by default.
.It Fl U
Display information about processes whose real user ID matches the specified
user IDs or names.
Implies
.Fl x
by default.
.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 131 columns to display information.
If
.Fl w
is specified more than once,
.Nm
will use as many columns as necessary.
Please see the preamble of this manual page for how the output width is
initially determined.
In particular, if the initial output width is unlimited, specifying
.Fl w
has no effect.
Please also consult the
.Sx BUGS
section.
.It Fl X
When displaying processes selected by other options, skip any processes which do
not have a controlling terminal, except for those selected through
.Fl p .
This is the default behaviour, unless using another option whose description
explicitly says that
.Fl x
is implied.
.It Fl x
When displaying processes selected by other options, include processes which do
not have a controlling terminal.
This option has the opposite behavior to that of
.Fl X .
If both
.Fl X
and
.Fl x
are specified,
.Nm
will obey the last occurence.
.It Fl Z
Add
.Xr mac 4
label to the list of keywords for which
.Nm
will display information.
.El
.Sh KEYWORDS
The following is a complete list of the available keywords and their meanings.
Several of them have aliases (keywords which are synonyms).
Detailed descriptions for some of them can be found after this list.
.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 KiB
.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 in KiB
.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 KiB
.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 KiB
.It Cm tsid
control terminal session ID
.It Cm tsiz
text size in KiB
.It Cm tt
control terminal name (two letter abbreviation)
.It Cm tty
full name of control terminal
.It Cm ucomm
process name 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 KiB (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
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 command
The printed command and arguments are determined as follows.
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 <defunct>.
If the arguments cannot be located
.Po
usually because they have not been set, as is the case for system processes
and/or kernel threads
.Pc ,
the command name is printed within square brackets.
The
.Nm
utility first tries to obtain the arguments cached by the kernel
.Po
if they were shorter than the value of the
.Va kern.ps_arg_cache_limit
sysctl
.Pc .
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
.Cm ucomm
keyword
.Pq accounting
can, however, be depended on.
If the arguments are unavailable or do not agree with the
.Cm ucomm
keyword, the value for the
.Cm ucomm
keyword is appended to the arguments in parentheses.
.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 KiB.
.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 sig
The bitmask of signals pending in the process queue if the
.Fl H
option has not been specified, else the per-thread queue of pending signals.
.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
.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.
Only affects the traditional text style output.
Please see the preamble of this manual page on how the final output width is
determined.
.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_options 7 ,
.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 -p1003.1-2024
and what is supported on
.No non- Ns Bx
operating systems.
.Pp
In particular, and contrary to this implementation, POSIX specifies that option
.Fl d
should serve to select all processes except session leaders, option
.Fl e
to select all processes
.Po
equivalently to
.Fl A
.Pc ,
and option
.Fl u
to select processes by effective user ID.
.Pp
However, options
.Fl A , a , G , l , o , p , U ,
and
.Fl t
behave as prescribed by
.St -p1003.1-2024 .
Options
.Fl f
and
.Fl w
currently do not, but may be changed to in the future.
.Pp
POSIX's option
.Fl g ,
to select processes having the specified processes as their session leader, is
not implemented.
However, other UNIX systems that provide this functionality do so via option
.Fl s
instead, reserving
.Fl g
to query by group leaders.
.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
.Nm ps
currently does not correctly limit the ouput width, and in most cases does not
limit it at all when it should.
Regardless of the target width, requested columns are always all printed and
with widths allowing to entirely print their longest values, except for columns
with keyword
.Cm command
or
.Cm args
that are not last in the display
.Pq they are truncated to 16 bytes ,
and for the last column in the display if its keyword requests textual
information of variable length, such as the
.Cm command , jail ,
and
.Cm user
keywords do.
This considerably limits the effects and usefulness of the terminal width on the
output, and consequently that of the
.Ev COLUMNS
environment variable and the
.Fl w
option
.Pq if specified only once .
.Pp
The
.Nm
utility does not correctly display argument lists containing multibyte
characters.