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PS(1) FreeBSD General Commands Manual PS(1)
NAME ps - process status
SYNOPSIS ps [--libxo] [-aCcdefHhjlmrSTuvwXxZ] [-O fmt | -o fmt] [-D up | down | both] [-G gid[,gid...]] [-J jid[,jid...]] [-M core] [-N system] [-p pid[,pid...]] [-t tty[,tty...]] [-U user[,user...]] ps [--libxo] -L
DESCRIPTION The ps utility displays a header line, followed by lines containing information about all of your processes that have controlling terminals. If the -x options is specified, ps will also display processes that do not have controlling terminals.
A different set of processes can be selected for display by using any combination of the -a, -G, -J, -p, -T, -t, and -U options. If more than one of these options are given, then ps will select all processes which are matched by at least one of the given options.
For the processes which have been selected for display, ps will usually display one line per process. The -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 -m, -r, -u, and -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.
For the processes which have been selected for display, the information to display is selected based on a set of keywords (see the -L, -O, and -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.
If the ps process is associated with a terminal, the default output width is that of the terminal; otherwise the output width is unlimited. See also the -w option.
The options are as follows:
--libxo Generate output via libxo(3) in a selection of different human and machine readable formats. See xo_parse_args(3) for details on command line arguments.
-a Display information about other users' processes as well as your own. If the security.bsd.see_other_uids sysctl is set to zero, this option is honored only if the UID of the user is 0.
-c Change the "command" column output to just contain the executable name, rather than the full command line.
-C Change the way the CPU percentage is calculated by using a "raw" CPU calculation that ignores "resident" time (this normally has no effect).
-d Arrange processes into descendancy order and prefix each command "UP" will add the ancestor processes, "DOWN" will add the descendant processes, and "BOTH" will add both the ancestor and the descendant processes. -D does not imply -d, but works well with it.
-e Display the environment as well.
-f Show command-line and environment information about swapped out processes. This option is honored only if the UID of the user is 0.
-G Display information about processes which are running with the specified real group IDs.
-H Show all of the threads associated with each process.
-h Repeat the information header as often as necessary to guarantee one header per page of information.
-j Print information associated with the following keywords: user, pid, ppid, pgid, sid, jobc, state, tt, time, and command.
-J Display information about processes which match the specified jail IDs. This may be either the jid or name of the jail. Use -J 0 to display only host processes. This flag implies -x by default.
-L List the set of keywords available for the -O and -o options.
-l Display information associated with the following keywords: uid, pid, ppid, cpu, pri, nice, vsz, rss, mwchan, state, tt, time, and command.
-M Extract values associated with the name list from the specified core instead of the currently running system.
-m Sort by memory usage, instead of the combination of controlling terminal and process ID.
-N Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the default, which is the kernel image the system has booted from.
-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.
-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 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 -o option. So the header texts for multiple keywords can be changed. If all keywords have empty header texts, no header line is written.
-p Display information about processes which match the specified parent process.
-T Display information about processes attached to the device associated with the standard input.
-t Display information about processes attached to the specified terminal devices. Full pathnames, as well as abbreviations (see explanation of the tt keyword) can be specified.
-U Display the processes belonging to the specified usernames.
-u Display information associated with the following keywords: user, pid, %cpu, %mem, vsz, rss, tt, state, start, time, and command. The -u option implies the -r option.
-v Display information associated with the following keywords: pid, state, time, sl, re, pagein, vsz, rss, lim, tsiz, %cpu, %mem, and command. The -v option implies the -m option.
-w Use at least 132 columns to display information, instead of the default which is the window size if ps is associated with a terminal. If the -w option is specified more than once, ps will use as many columns as necessary without regard for the window size. Note that this option has no effect if the "command" column is not the last column displayed.
-X When displaying processes matched by other options, skip any processes which do not have a controlling terminal. This is the default behaviour.
-x When displaying processes matched by other options, include processes which do not have a controlling terminal. This is the opposite of the -X option. If both -X and -x are specified in the same command, then ps will use the one which was specified last.
-Z Add mac(4) label to the list of keywords for which ps will display information.
A complete list of the available keywords are listed below. Some of these keywords are further specified as follows:
%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 %cpu fields to exceed 100%.
%mem The percentage of real memory used by this process.
class Login class associated with the process.
flags The flags associated with the process as in the include file <sys/proc.h>:
P_ADVLOCK 0x00001 Process may hold a POSIX advisory lock P_CONTROLT 0x00002 Has a controlling terminal P_KPROC 0x00004 Kernel process P_SUGID 0x00100 Had set id privileges since last exec P_SYSTEM 0x00200 System proc: no sigs, stats or swapping P_SINGLE_EXIT 0x00400 Threads suspending should exit, not wait P_TRACED 0x00800 Debugged process being traced P_WAITED 0x01000 Someone is waiting for us P_WEXIT 0x02000 Working on exiting P_EXEC 0x04000 Process called exec P_WKILLED 0x08000 Killed, shall go to kernel/user boundary ASAP P_CONTINUED 0x10000 Proc has continued from a stopped state P_STOPPED_SIG 0x20000 Stopped due to SIGSTOP/SIGTSTP P_STOPPED_TRACE 0x40000 Stopped because of tracing P_STOPPED_SINGLE 0x80000 Only one thread can continue P_PROTECTED 0x100000 Do not kill on memory overcommit P_SIGEVENT 0x200000 Process pending signals changed P_SINGLE_BOUNDARY 0x400000 Threads should suspend at user boundary P_HWPMC 0x800000 Process is using HWPMCs P_JAILED 0x1000000 Process is in jail P_TOTAL_STOP 0x2000000 Stopped for system suspend P_INEXEC 0x4000000 Process is in execve(2) P_STATCHILD 0x8000000 Child process stopped or exited P_INMEM 0x10000000 Loaded into memory P_SWAPPINGOUT 0x20000000 Process is being swapped out P_SWAPPINGIN 0x40000000 Process is being swapped in P_PPTRACE 0x80000000 Vforked child issued ptrace(PT_TRACEME)
flags2 The flags kept in p_flag2 associated with the process as in the include file <sys/proc.h>:
P2_INHERIT_PROTECTED 0x00000001 New children get P_PROTECTED P2_NOTRACE 0x00000002 No ptrace(2) attach or coredumps P2_NOTRACE_EXEC 0x00000004 Keep P2_NOPTRACE on execve(2) P2_AST_SU 0x00000008 Handles SU ast for kthreads P2_PTRACE_FSTP 0x00000010 SIGSTOP from PT_ATTACH not yet handled
label The MAC label of the process.
lim The soft limit on memory used, specified via a call to setrlimit(2).
lstart The exact time the command started, using the `%c' format described in strftime(3).
name if the process is blocked on a lock. See the wchan and lockname keywords for details.
nice The process scheduling increment (see setpriority(2)).
rss the real memory (resident set) size of the process (in 1024 byte units).
start The time the command started. If the command started less than 24 hours ago, the start time is displayed using the "%H:%M" format described in strftime(3). If the command started less than 7 days ago, the start time is displayed using the "%a%H" format. Otherwise, the start time is displayed using the "%e%b%y" format.
state The state is given by a sequence of characters, for example, "RWNA". The first character indicates the run state of the process:
D Marks a process in disk (or other short term, uninterruptible) wait. I Marks a process that is idle (sleeping for longer than about 20 seconds). L Marks a process that is waiting to acquire a lock. R Marks a runnable process. S Marks a process that is sleeping for less than about 20 seconds. T Marks a stopped process. W Marks an idle interrupt thread. Z Marks a dead process (a "zombie").
Additional characters after these, if any, indicate additional state information:
+ The process is in the foreground process group of its control terminal. < The process has raised CPU scheduling priority. C The process is in capsicum(4) capability mode. E The process is trying to exit. J Marks a process which is in jail(2). The hostname of the prison can be found in /proc/<pid>/status. L The process has pages locked in core (for example, for raw I/O). N The process has reduced CPU scheduling priority (see setpriority(2)). s The process is a session leader. V The process' parent is suspended during a vfork(2), waiting for the process to exec or exit. W The process is swapped out. X The process is being traced or debugged.
tt An abbreviation for the pathname of the controlling terminal, if any. The abbreviation consists of the three letters following /dev/tty, or, for pseudo-terminals, the corresponding entry in /dev/pts. This is followed by a `-' if the process can no longer reach that controlling terminal (i.e., it has been revoked). A `-' without a preceding two letter abbreviation or pseudo-terminal device number indicates a process which never had a controlling terminal. The full
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 "<defunct>", and a process which is blocked while trying to exit is listed as "<exiting>". 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 ps utility first tries to obtain the arguments cached by the kernel (if they were shorter than the value of the kern.ps_arg_cache_limit sysctl). The process can change the arguments shown with setproctitle(3). Otherwise, ps 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.
KEYWORDS The following is a complete list of the available keywords and their meanings. Several of them have aliases (keywords which are synonyms).
%cpu percentage CPU usage (alias pcpu) %mem percentage memory usage (alias pmem) acflag accounting flag (alias acflg) args command and arguments class login class comm command command command and arguments cow number of copy-on-write faults cpu The processor number on which the process is executing (visible only on SMP systems). dsiz data size (in Kbytes) emul system-call emulation environment (ABI) etime elapsed running time, format "[days-][hours:]minutes:seconds" etimes elapsed running time, in decimal integer seconds fib default FIB number, see setfib(1) flags the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias f) flags2 the additional set of process flags, in hexadecimal (alias f2) gid effective group ID (alias egid) group group name (from egid) (alias egroup) inblk total blocks read (alias inblock) jail jail name jid jail ID jobc job control count ktrace tracing flags label MAC label lim memoryuse limit lockname lock currently blocked on (as a symbolic name) logname login name of user who started the session lstart time started lwp thread (light-weight process) ID (alias tid) majflt total page faults minflt total page reclaims msgrcv total messages received (reads from pipes/sockets) msgsnd total messages sent (writes on pipes/sockets) mwchan wait channel or lock currently blocked on nice nice value (alias ni) paddr process pointer pagein pageins (same as majflt) pgid process group number pid process ID ppid parent process ID pri scheduling priority re core residency time (in seconds; 127 = infinity) rgid real group ID rgroup group name (from rgid) rss resident set size rtprio realtime priority (see rtprio(1)) ruid real user ID ruser user name (from ruid) sid session ID sig pending signals (alias pending) sigcatch caught signals (alias caught) sigignore ignored signals (alias ignored) sigmask blocked signals (alias blocked) sl sleep time (in seconds; 127 = infinity) ssiz stack size (in Kbytes) start time started state symbolic process state (alias stat) svgid saved gid from a setgid executable svuid saved UID from a setuid executable systime accumulated system CPU time tdaddr thread address tdname thread name tdev control terminal device number time accumulated CPU time, user + system (alias cputime) tpgid control terminal process group ID tracer tracer process ID tsid control terminal session ID tsiz text size (in Kbytes) tt control terminal name (two letter abbreviation) tty full name of control terminal ucomm name to be used for accounting uid effective user ID (alias euid) upr scheduling priority on return from system call (alias usrpri) uprocp process pointer user user name (from UID) usertime accumulated user CPU time vmaddr vmspace pointer vsz virtual size in Kbytes (alias vsize) wchan wait channel (as a symbolic name) xstat exit or stop status (valid only for stopped or zombie process)
Note that the pending column displays bitmask of signals pending in the process queue when -H option is not specified, otherwise the per-thread queue of pending signals is shown.
ENVIRONMENT The following environment variables affect the execution of ps:
COLUMNS If set, specifies the user's preferred output width in column positions. By default, ps attempts to automatically determine the terminal width.
FILES /boot/kernel/kernel default system namelist $ ps -auxw
SEE ALSO kill(1), pgrep(1), pkill(1), procstat(1), w(1), kvm(3), libxo(3), strftime(3), xo_parse_args(3), mac(4), procfs(5), pstat(8), sysctl(8), mutex(9)
STANDARDS For historical reasons, the ps utility under FreeBSD supports a different set of options from what is described by IEEE Std 1003.2 ("POSIX.2"), and what is supported on non-BSD operating systems.
HISTORY The ps command appeared in Version 3 AT&T UNIX in section 8 of the manual.
BUGS Since ps cannot run faster than the system and is run as any other scheduled process, the information it displays can never be exact.
The ps utility does not correctly display argument lists containing multibyte characters.
FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11 August 24, 2023 FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11