4BSD/usr/man/cat1/ps.1
PS(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual PS(1)
NAME
ps - process status
SYNOPSIS
ps [ acegklstuvwx# ]
DESCRIPTION
_P_s prints information about processes. Normally, only your
processes are candidates to be printed by _p_s; specifying a
causes other users processes to be candidates to be printed;
specifying x includes processes without control terminals in
the candidate pool.
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 includes both user and system time),
the state STAT of the process, and an indication of the COM-
MAND which is running. The state is given by a sequence of
four letters, e.g. ``RWNA''. The first letter indicates the
runnability 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. The second letter
indicates whether a process is swapped out, showing W if it
is, or a blank if it is loaded (in-core). The third letter
indicates whether a process is running with altered CPU
scheduling priority (nice); if the processes priority is
reduced, a N is shown, if the process priority has been
artificially raised then a `<' is shown; process running
without special treatment have just a blank. The final
letter indicates any special treatment of the process for
virtual memory replacement; the letters correspond to
options to the _v_a_d_v_i_s_e(2) call; currently the only possibil-
ity is A standing for VA_ANOM or blank for VA_NORM; an A
typically represents a _l_i_s_p(1) in garbage collection.
Here are the options:
a asks for information about all processes with terminals
(ordinarily only one's own processes are displayed).
c prints the command name, as stored internally in the
system for purposes of accounting, rather than the com-
mand arguments, which are kept in the process' address
space. This is more reliable, if less informative,
since the process is free to destroy the latter infor-
mation.
e Asks for the environment to be printed as well as the
arguments to the command.
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g Asks for all processes. Without this option, _p_s only
prints ``interesting'' processes. Processes are deemed
to be uninteresting if they are process group leaders.
This normally eliminates top-level command interpreters
and processes waiting for users to login on free termi-
nals.
k causes the file /_v_m_c_o_r_e is used in place of /_d_e_v/_k_m_e_m
and /_d_e_v/_m_e_m. This is used for postmortem system
debugging.
l asks for a long listing, with fields PPID, CP, PRI, NI,
ADDR, SIZE, RSS and WCHAN as described below.
s Adds the size SSIZ of the kernel stack of each process
(for use by system maintainers) to the basic output
format.
t_x restricts output to processes whose controlling tty is
_x (which should be specified as printed by _p_s, e.g. _t_3
for tty3, _t_c_o for console, _t_d_0 for ttyd0, _t? for
processes with no tty, etc). This option must be the
last one given.
u A user oriented output is produced. This includes
fields USER, %CPU, NICE, SIZE, and RSS as described
below.
v A version of the output containing virtual memory
statistics is output. This includes fields RE, SL,
PAGEIN, SIZE, RSS, SRS, TSIZ, TRS, %CPU and %MEM,
described below.
w Use a wide output format (132 columns rather than 80);
if repeated, e.g. ww, use arbitrarily wide output.
This information is used to decide how much of long
commands to print.
x asks even about processes with no terminal.
# 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 tells _p_s where to look for _c_o_r_e if the k
option is given, instead of /vmcore. A third argument is
the name of a swap file to use instead of the default
/dev/drum. If a fourth argument is given, it is taken to be
the file containing the system's namelist. Otherwise,
/vmunix is used.
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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 com-
puted 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 _n_i_c_e(2))
SIZE virtual size of the process (in 1024 byte units)
RSS real memory (resident set) size of the process (in
1024 byte units)
SRS number of real memory pages (RSS) if and when
swapped
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 process to pages not loaded in core.
UID numerical user-id of process owner
PPID numerical id of parent of process
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 event on which process is waiting (an address in
the system), with the initial part of the address
trimmed off e.g. 80004000 prints as 4000.
F flags associated with process as in
/usr/include/sys/proc.h:
SLOAD 000001 in core
SSYS 000002 swapper or pager process
SLOCK 000004 process being swapped out
SSWAP 000008 save area flag
STRC 000010 process is being traced
SWTED 000020 another tracing 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
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STIMO 040000 timing out during sleep
SDETACH 080000 detached inherited by init
SNUSIG 100000 using new signal mechanism
A process that has exited and has a parent, but has not yet
been waited for by the parent is marked <defunct>; a process
which is blocked trying to exit is marked <exiting>; _P_s
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.
FILES
/vmunix system namelist
/dev/kmem kernel memory
/dev/drum swap device
/vmcore core file
/dev searched to find swap device and tty names
SEE ALSO
kill(1), w(1)
BUGS
Things can change while _p_s is running; the picture it gives
is only a close approximation to reality.
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