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This page displays the COHERENT manpage for ps [Print process status].
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ps -- Command Print process status ps [-][adefglmnrtwx] [-c sys] [mem] [-ppid,pid,...,pid] ps prints information about a process or processes. It prints the information in fields, followed by the command name and arguments. The fields include the following: TTY The controlling terminal of the command, printed in short form. For example, ``tty44:'' means /dev/tty44. A dash means there is no controlling terminal. PID Process id; necessary to know when the process is to be killed. GROUP PID of the group leader of the process, that is, the shell that started up when the user logged in. PPID PID of the parent of the process; very often a shell. UID User id or name of the owner. K Size of the process, in kilobytes. F Process flag bits, as follows: PFCORE 00001 Process is in core PFLOCK 00002 Process is locked in core PFSWIO 00004 Swap I/O in progress PFSWAP 00010 Process is swapped out PFWAIT 00020 Process is stopped (not waited) PFSTOP 00040 Process is stopped (waited on) PFTRAC 00100 Process is being traced PFKERN 00200 Kernel process PFAUXM 00400 Auxiliary segments in memory PFDISP 01000 Dispatch at earliest convenience PFNDMP 02000 Command mode forbids dump PFWAKE 04000 Wakeup requested S State of the process, as follows: R Ready to run (waiting for CPU time) S Stopped for other reasons (I/O completion, pause, etc.) T Being traced by another process W Waiting for an existent child Z Zombie (dead, but parent not waiting) EVENT The condition that the process is anticipating. This not applicable if the process is ready to run. The following gives the legal symbolic names of events. If a driver does not support symbolic event names, ps prints a unique hexadecimal number instead: System Sleeps: bpwait Wait for a buffer to become valid bufneed Wait for a free buffer to become available bwrite Wait for a buffer write to finish ioreq An IO request is being processed pause This process is in the pause() system call pipe data Wait for data to appear in a pipe pipe wx poll Wake for polled event, poll timeout, or signal ptrace Send a ptrace command to a traced child ptret Wait for signal processing in a traced child to complete pwrite Wait for a pipe to empty enough for a write swap Wait for a process to get swapped in wait Wait for a child to terminate waitq Wait for more character queues to become available Driver Sleeps aha:ccb AHA-154x driver is waiting for a SCSI command to complete nkbcmd nkbcmd... nkbcmd2 nkbcmd2...nkb is waiting for a command to complete ptycd Pseudoterminal driver is waiting for carrier ptyread Pseudoterminal driver is waiting for a read ptywrite Pseudoterminal driver is waiting for a write ttydrain Line discipline is waiting for a tty to drain ttyiodrn ioctl() asked line discipline to let tty output drain ttyoq Line discipline is waiting for an output queue to drain ttywait Line discipline is waiting for more data CVAL SVAL IVAL RVAL Scheduling information; bigger is better. UTIME Time consumed while running in the program (in seconds). STIME Time consumed while running in the system (in seconds). Normally, ps displays the TTY and PID fields of each active process started on the caller's terminal, as well as the command name and arguments. The following flags alter this behavior. -a Display information about processes started from all terminals. -c sys This option does nothing; it is included to preserve the integrity of some shell scripts. -d Print information about status of loadable drivers. -e Same as -a. This is included for compatibility with other implementation of ps. -f Blank fields have `-' place-holders. This enables field-oriented commands like sort and awk to process the output. -g Print the group leader field GROUP if the l option is given. -k mem The next argument mem is the memory image (default, /dev/mem). Note that this argument currently does nothing; it is included only to preserve old shell scripts. The COHERENT implementation of ps reads information from /dev/ps. This permits ps to be smaller and faster, helps to avoid ``ghosts,'' and to be atomic. -l Long format. In addition to the TTY and PID fields, prints the PPID, UID, K, F, S and EVENT fields. -m This option does nothing; it is included to preserve the integrity of some shell scripts. -n Suppress the header line. -ppid,pid,...,pid Print information for each process identifier pid in the comma- separated list. -r Print the real size of the process, which includes the user and auxiliary segments assigned to the process. Because the user segment (usually 1 kilobyte) is shared by all processes owned by that user, this may give a misleading total size for all the user's processes. -t Print elapsed CPU time fields UTIME and STIME. -w Wide format output; print 132 columns instead of 80. -x Display processes which do not have a controlling terminal. Files /dev/ps -- Device for a system driver /dev/tty* -- List of terminal names See Also commands, hmon, kill, mem, ps [device driver],b>a> <a href="manpage.php?page=size"><b>size,b>a> <a href="manpage.php?page=wait.c"><b>waitb>a> <i>Notesi> Each process can modify or destroy its command name and arguments. The state of the system changes even as ps runs.