4.3BSD-Reno/share/man/cat1/ps.0
PS(1) UNIX Reference Manual PS(1)
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ppss - display current process status
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ppss [--aacceeggkkllnnssttuuvvwwxxUU##]
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PPss displays the current process status. Normally, only your processes
are candidates to be printed by ppss; specifying --aa causes other users'
processes to be candidates to be printed; specifying --xx includes
processes without control terminals in the candidate pool. While ppss is a
fairly accurate snapshot of the system, PPss cannot begin and finish a
snapshot of the system as fast as some processes themselves change state.
At times there may be minor discrepancies.
All output formats include, for each process, the process id PID, control
terminal of the process TT, cpu time used by the process TIME (this in-
cludes both user and system time), the state STAT of the process, and an
indication of the COMMAND which is running. The state is given by a se-
quence of letters, e.g. ``RWNA''. The first letter indicates the runna-
bility of the process: R for runnable processes, T for stopped processes,
P for processes in page wait, D for those in disk (or other short term)
waits, S for those sleeping for less than about 20 seconds, and I for
idle (sleeping longer than about 20 seconds) processes. Additional char-
acters after these, if any, indicate additional state information. The
letter W indicates that a process is swapped out, showing W if it is, or
a blank if it is loaded (in-core). A process which has specified a soft
limit on memory requirements and which is exceeding that limit shows >;
such a process is (necessarily) not swapped. An additional letter may
indicate whether a process is running with altered CPU scheduling priori-
ty (nice); if the process priority is reduced, an N is shown, if the pro-
cess priority has been artificially raised then a `<' is shown. The fi-
nal optional letter indicates any special treatment of the process for
virtual memory replacement; the letters correspond to options to the vad-
vise(2) call; currently the possibilities are A standing for VA_ANOM and
S for VA_SEQL. An A typically represents a lisp(1) in garbage collec-
tion, and S is typical of large image processing programs which are using
virtual memory to sequentially address voluminous data.
Here are the options:
--aa asks for information regarding processes associated with termi-
nals (ordinarily only one's own processes are displayed).
--cc prints the command name, as stored internally in the system for
purposes of accounting, rather than the command arguments,
which are kept in the process' address space. This is more re-
liable, if less informative, since the process is free to des-
troy the latter information.
--ee Asks for the environment to be printed as well as the arguments
to the command.
--gg Asks for all processes. Without this option, ppss only prints
``interesting'' processes. Processes are deemed to be unin-
teresting if they are process group leaders. This normally el-
iminates top-level command interpreters and processes waiting
for users to login on free terminals.
--kk causes the file /_v_m_c_o_r_e to be used instead of /_d_e_v/_k_m_e_m and
/_d_e_v/_m_e_m for non-interactive (after the fact) debugging.
--ll asks for a detailed list, with fields PPID, CP, PRI, NI, ADDR,
SIZE, RSS and WCHAN as described below.
--nn Asks for numerical output. In a long listing, the WCHAN field
is printed numerically rather than symbolically, or, in a user
listing, the USER field is replaced by a UID field.
--ss Adds the size SSIZ of the kernel stack of each process (for use
by system maintainers) to the basic output format. _x Only
output information on processes whose controlling tty is _x
(which should be specified as printed by ppss, e.g. _t_3 for tty3,
_t_c_o for console, _t_d_0 for ttyd0, _t ? for processes with no tty,
_t for processes at the current tty, etc). This option must be
the last one given.
--uu A user oriented output is produced. This includes fields USER,
%CPU, NICE, SIZE, and RSS as described below.
--vv A version of the output containing virtual memory statistics is
output. This includes fields RE, SL, PAGEIN, SIZE, RSS, LIM,
TSIZ, TRS, %CPU and %MEM, described below.
--ww Use a wide output format (132 columns rather than 80); if re-
peated, e.g. ww, use arbitrarily wide output. This information
is used to decide how much of long commands to print.
--xx asks even about processes with no terminal.
--UU causes ps to update a private database where it keeps system
information. Thus ``ps U'' should be included in the /_e_t_c/_r_c
file.
--## A process number may be given, (indicated here by #), in which
case the output is restricted to that process. This option
must also be last.
A second argument is taken to be the file containing the system's namel-
ist. Otherwise, /vmunix is used. A third argument tells ppss where to
look for _c_o_r_e if the --kk option is given, instead of /_v_m_c_o_r_e. If a fourth
argument is given, it is taken to be the name of a swap file to use in-
stead of the default /_d_e_v/_d_r_u_m.
Fields which are not common to all output formats:
USER name of the owner of the process
%CPU 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%.
NICE (or NI) process scheduling increment (see setpriority(2))
SIZE virtual size of the process (in 1024 byte units)
RSS real memory (resident set) size of the process (in 1024
byte units)
LIM soft limit on memory used, specified via a call to
setrlimit(2); if no limit has been specified then shown as
_x_x
TSIZ size of text (shared program) image
TRS size of resident (real memory) set of text
%MEM percentage of real memory used by this process.
RE residency time of the process (seconds in core)
SL sleep time of the process (seconds blocked)
PAGEIN number of disk i/o's resulting from references by the pro-
cess to pages not loaded in core.
UID process owner's user-id (numerical)
PPID parent process id (numerical)
CP short-term cpu utilization factor (used in scheduling)
PRI process priority (non-positive when in non-interruptible
wait)
ADDR swap address of the process
WCHAN address of event on which a process is waiting (an address
in the system). A symbol is chosen that classifies the
address, unless numerical output is requested (see the --nn
flag). In this case, the initial part of the address is
trimmed off and is printed hexadecimally, e.g., 0x80004000
prints as 4000.
F flags associated with process as in <_s_y_s/_p_r_o_c._h>:
SLOAD 000001 in core
SSYS 000002 swapper or pager process
SLOCK 000004 swapping out process
SSWAP 000008 save area flag
STRC 000010 tracing the process
SWTED 000020 trace flag
SULOCK 000040 user settable lock in core
SPAGE 000080 process in page wait state
SKEEP 000100 another flag to prevent swap out
SDLYU 000200 delayed unlock of pages
SWEXIT 000400 working on exiting
SPHYSIO 000800 doing physical i/o (bio.c)
SVFORK 001000 process resulted from vfork()
SVFDONE 002000 another vfork flag
SNOVM 004000 no vm, parent in a vfork()
SPAGI 008000 init data space on demand from inode
SANOM 010000 system detected anomalous vm behavior
SUANOM 020000 user warned of anomalous vm behavior
STIMO 040000 timing out during sleep
SDETACH 080000 detached inherited by init
SOUSIG 100000 using old signal mechanism
<defunct> A <defunct> process is one that has exited, but whose parent
process has not waited for it. A process that has exited and
has a parent that has not yet waited for the process is
marked <defunct>.
<exiting> A process which is blocked trying to exit is marked <exiting>
PPss 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 counted on too much.
FFIILLEESS
/_v_m_u_n_i_x system namelist
/_d_e_v/_k_m_e_m kernel memory
/_d_e_v/_d_r_u_m swap device
/_v_m_c_o_r_e core file
/_d_e_v searched to find swap device and tty names
SSEEEE AALLSSOO
kill(1), w(1)
HHIISSTTOORRYY
A PPss command appeared in VERSION 6 AT&T UNIX.