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User Commands ps(1)
NAME
ps - report process status
SYNOPSIS
ps [-aAcdefjlLPyZ] [-g grplist] [-n namelist] [-
o format]... [-p proclist] [-s sidlist] [-t term] [-
u uidlist] [-U uidlist] [-G gidlist] [-z zonelist]
The ps command prints information about active processes.
Without options, ps prints information about processes that
have the same effective user ID and the same controlling
terminal as the invoker. The output contains only the pro-
cess ID, terminal identifier, cumulative execution time, and
the command name. Otherwise, the information that is
displayed is controlled by the options.
Some options accept lists as arguments. Items in a list can
be either separated by commas or else enclosed in quotes and
separated by commas or spaces. Values for proclist and
grplist must be numeric.
The following options are supported:
-a Lists information about all processes most
frequently requested: all those except ses-
sion leaders and processes not associated
with a terminal.
-A Lists information for all processes. Identi-
cal to -e, below.
-c Prints information in a format that reflects
scheduler properties as described in
priocntl(1). The -c option affects the out-
put of the -f and -l options, as described
below.
-d Lists information about all processes except
session leaders.
-e Lists information about every process now
running.
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User Commands ps(1)
-f Generates a full listing. (See below for
significance of columns in a full listing.)
-g grplist Lists only process data whose group leader's
ID number(s) appears in grplist. (A group
leader is a process whose process ID number
is identical to its process group ID
number.)
-G gidlist Lists information for processes whose real
group ID numbers are given in gidlist. The
gidlist must be a single argument in the
form of a blank- or comma-separated list.
-j Prints session ID and process group ID.
-l Generates a long listing. (See below.)
-L Prints information about each light weight
process (lwp) in each selected process. (See
below.)
-n namelist Specifies the name of an alternative system
namelist file in place of the default. This
option is accepted for compatibility, but is
ignored.
-o format Prints information according to the format
specification given in format. This is fully
described in DISPLAY FORMATS. Multiple -o
options can be specified; the format specif-
ication will be interpreted as the space-
character-separated concatenation of all the
format option-arguments.
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User Commands ps(1)
-p proclist Lists only process data whose process ID
numbers are given in proclist.
-P Prints the number of the processor to which
the process or lwp is bound, if any, under
an additional column header, PSR.
-s sidlist Lists information on all session leaders
whose IDs appear in sidlist.
-t term Lists only process data associated with
term. Terminal identifiers are specified as
a device file name, and an identifier. For
example, term/a, or pts/0.
-u uidlist Lists only process data whose effective user
ID number or login name is given in uidlist.
In the listing, the numerical user ID will
be printed unless you give the -f option,
which prints the login name.
-U uidlist Lists information for processes whose real
user ID numbers or login names are given in
uidlist. The uidlist must be a single argu-
ment in the form of a blank- or comma-
separated list.
-y Under a long listing (-l), omits the
obsolete F and ADDR columns and includes an
RSS column to report the resident set size
of the process. Under the -y option, both
RSS and SZ (see below) will be reported in
units of kilobytes instead of pages.
-z zonelist Lists only processes in the specified zones.
Zones can be specified either by name or ID.
This option is only useful when executed in
the global zone.
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User Commands ps(1)
-Z Prints the name of the zone with which the
process is associated under an additional
column header, ZONE.
Many of the options shown are used to select processes to
list. If any are specified, the default list will be ignored
and ps will select the processes represented by the
inclusive OR of all the selection-criteria options.
DISPLAY FORMATS
Under the -f option, ps tries to determine the command name
and arguments given when the process was created by examin-
ing the user block. Failing this, the command name is
printed, as it would have appeared without the -f option, in
square brackets.
The column headings and the meaning of the columns in a ps
listing are given below; the letters f and l indicate the
option (full or long, respectively) that causes the
corresponding heading to appear; all means that the heading
always appears. Note: These two options determine only what
information is provided for a process; they do not determine
which processes will be listed.
F (l) Flags (hexadecimal and additive) associated
with the process. These flags are available
for historical purposes; no meaning should
be currently ascribed to them.
S (l) The state of the process:
O Process is running on a processor.
S Sleeping: process is waiting for an
event to complete.
R Runnable: process is on run queue.
Z Zombie state: process terminated
and parent not waiting.
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User Commands ps(1)
T Process is stopped, either by a job
control signal or because it is
being traced.
UID (f,l) The effective user ID number of the process
(the login name is printed under the -f
option).
PID (all) The process ID of the process (this datum is
necessary in order to kill a process).
PPID (f,l) The process ID of the parent process.
C (f,l) Processor utilization for scheduling
(obsolete). Not printed when the -c option
is used.
CLS (f,l) Scheduling class. Printed only when the -c
option is used.
PRI (l) The priority of the process. Without the -c
option, higher numbers mean lower priority.
With the -c option, higher numbers mean
higher priority.
NI (l) Nice value, used in priority computation.
Not printed when the -c option is used. Only
processes in the certain scheduling classes
have a nice value.
ADDR (l) The memory address of the process.
SZ (l) The total size of the process in virtual
memory, including all mapped files and
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User Commands ps(1)
devices, in pages. See pagesize(1)
WCHAN (l) The address of an event for which the pro-
cess is sleeping (if blank, the process is
running).
STIME (f) The starting time of the process, given in
hours, minutes, and seconds. (A process
begun more than twenty-four hours before the
ps inquiry is executed is given in months
and days.)
TTY (all) The controlling terminal for the process
(the message, ?, is printed when there is no
controlling terminal).
TIME (all) The cumulative execution time for the pro-
cess.
CMD (all) The command name (the full command name and
its arguments, up to a limit of 80 charac-
ters, are printed under the -f option).
The following two additional columns are printed when the -j
option is specified:
PGID The process ID of the process group leader.
SID The process ID of the session leader.
The following two additional columns are printed when the -L
option is specified:
LWP The lwp ID of the lwp being reported.
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User Commands ps(1)
NLWP The number of lwps in the process (if -f is also
specified).
Under the -L option, one line is printed for each lwp in the
process and the time-reporting fields STIME and TIME show
the values for the lwp, not the process. A traditional
single-threaded process contains only one lwp.
A process that has exited and has a parent, but has not yet
been waited for by the parent, is marked <defunct>.
-o format
The -o option allows the output format to be specified under
user control.
The format specification must be a list of names presented
as a single argument, blank- or comma-separated. Each vari-
able has a default header. The default header can be over-
ridden by appending an equals sign and the new text of the
header. The rest of the characters in the argument will be
used as the header text. The fields specified will be writ-
ten in the order specified on the command line, and should
be arranged in columns in the output. The field widths will
be selected by the system to be at least as wide as the
header text (default or overridden value). If the header
text is null, such as -o user=, the field width will be at
least as wide as the default header text. If all header text
fields are null, no header line will be written.
The following names are recognized in the POSIX locale:
user The effective user ID of the process. This
will be the textual user ID, if it can be
obtained and the field width permits, or a
decimal representation otherwise.
ruser The real user ID of the process. This will
be the textual user ID, if it can be
obtained and the field width permits, or a
decimal representation otherwise.
group The effective group ID of the process. This
will be the textual group ID, if it can be
obtained and the field width permits, or a
decimal representation otherwise.
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User Commands ps(1)
rgroup The real group ID of the process. This will
be the textual group ID, if it can be
obtained and the field width permits, or a
decimal representation otherwise.
pid The decimal value of the process ID.
ppid The decimal value of the parent process ID.
pgid The decimal value of the process group ID.
pcpu The ratio of CPU time used recently to CPU
time available in the same period, expressed
as a percentage. The meaning of ``recently''
in this context is unspecified. The CPU time
available is determined in an unspecified
manner.
vsz The total size of the process in virtual
memory, in kilobytes.
nice The decimal value of the system scheduling
priority of the process. See nice(1)
etime In the POSIX locale, the elapsed time since
the process was started, in the form:
[[dd-]hh:]mm:ss
where
dd is the number of days
hh is the number of hours
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User Commands ps(1)
mm is the number of minutes
ss is the number of seconds
The dd field will be a decimal integer. The
hh, mm and ss fields will be two-digit
decimal integers padded on the left with
zeros.
time In the POSIX locale, the cumulative CPU time
of the process in the form:
[dd-]hh:mm:ss
The dd, hh, mm, and ss fields will be as
described in the etime specifier.
tty The name of the controlling terminal of the
process (if any) in the same format used by
the who(1) command.
comm The name of the command being executed
(argv[0] value) as a string.
args The command with all its arguments as a
string. The implementation may truncate this
value to the field width; it is
implementation-dependent whether any further
truncation occurs. It is unspecified whether
the string represented is a version of the
argument list as it was passed to the com-
mand when it started, or is a version of the
arguments as they may have been modified by
the application. Applications cannot depend
on being able to modify their argument list
and having that modification be reflected in
the output of ps. The Solaris implementa-
tion limits the string to 80 bytes; the
string is the version of the argument list
as it was passed to the command when it
started.
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User Commands ps(1)
The following names are recognized in the Solaris implemen-
tation:
f Flags (hexadecimal and additive) associated
with the process.
s The state of the process.
c Processor utilization for scheduling
(obsolete).
uid The effective user ID number of the process
as a decimal integer.
ruid The real user ID number of the process as a
decimal integer.
gid The effective group ID number of the process
as a decimal integer.
rgid The real group ID number of the process as a
decimal integer.
projid The project ID number of the process as a
decimal integer.
project The project ID of the process as a textual
value if that value can be obtained; other-
wise, as a decimal integer.
zoneid The zone ID number of the process as a
decimal integer.
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User Commands ps(1)
zone The zone ID of the process as a textual
value if that value can be obtained; other-
wise, as a decimal integer.
sid The process ID of the session leader.
taskid The task ID of the process.
class The scheduling class of the process.
pri The priority of the process. Higher numbers
mean higher priority.
opri The obsolete priority of the process. Lower
numbers mean higher priority.
lwp The decimal value of the lwp ID. Requesting
this formatting option causes one line to be
printed for each lwp in the process.
nlwp The number of lwps in the process.
psr The number of the processor to which the
process or lwp is bound.
pset The ID of the processor set to which the
process or lwp is bound.
addr The memory address of the process.
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User Commands ps(1)
osz The total size of the process in virtual
memory, in pages.
wchan The address of an event for which the pro-
cess is sleeping (if -, the process is run-
ning).
stime The starting time or date of the process,
printed with no blanks.
rss The resident set size of the process, in
kilobytes. The rss value reported by ps is
an estimate provided by proc(4) that may
underestimate the actual resident set size.
Users who wish to get more accurate usage
information for capacity planning should use
pmap(1) -x instead.
pmem The ratio of the process's resident set size
to the physical memory on the machine,
expressed as a percentage.
fname The first 8 bytes of the base name of the
process's executable file.
ctid The contract ID of the process contract the
process is a member of as a decimal integer.
Only comm and args are allowed to contain blank characters;
all others, including the Solaris implementation variables,
are not.
The following table specifies the default header to be used
in the POSIX locale corresponding to each format specifier.
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User Commands ps(1)
__________________________________________________________________
| Format Default | Format Default |
| Specifier Header | Specifier Header |
| args COMMAND | ppid PPID |
| comm COMMAND | rgroup RGROUP |
| etime ELAPSED | ruser RUSER |
| group GROUP | time TIME |
| nice NI | tty TT |
| pcpu %CPU | user USER |
| pgid PGID | vsz VSZ |
| pid PID | |
|________________________________|________________________________|
The following table lists the Solaris implementation format
specifiers and the default header used with each.
__________________________________________________________________
| Format Default | Format Default |
| Specifier Header | Specifier Header |
| addr ADDR | projid PROJID |
| c C | project PROJECT |
| class CLS | psr PSR |
| f F | rgid RGID |
| fname COMMAND | rss RSS |
| gid GID | ruid RUID |
| lwp LWP | s S |
| nlwp NLWP | sid SID |
| opri PRI | stime STIME |
| osz SZ | taskid TASKID |
| pmem %MEM | uid UID |
| pri PRI | wchan WCHAN |
| ctid CTID | zone ZONE |
| | zoneid ZONEID |
|________________________________|________________________________|
Example 1: Using ps Command
The command:
example% ps -o user,pid,ppid=MOM -o args
writes the following in the POSIX locale:
USER PID MOM COMMAND
helene 34 12 ps -o uid,pid,ppid=MOM -o args
The contents of the COMMAND field need not be the same due
to possible truncation.
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User Commands ps(1)
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment
variables that affect the execution of ps: LANG, LC_ALL,
LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, LC_TIME, and NLSPATH.
COLUMNS Override the system-selected hor-
izontal screen size, used to deter-
mine the number of text columns to
display.
The following exit values are returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 An error occurred.
/dev/pts/*
/dev/term/* terminal (``tty'') names searcher
files
/etc/passwd UID information supplier
/proc/* process control files
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:
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User Commands ps(1)
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWcsu |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| CSI | Enabled (see ) |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Interface Stability | Standard |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
kill(1), nice(1), pagesize(1), pgrep(1), pmap(1)
priocntl(1), who(1), getty(1M), proc(4), ttysrch(4), attri-
butes(5), environ(5), standards(5), zones(5)
Things can change while ps is running. The snapshot it gives
is true only for a split-second, and it may not be accurate
by the time you see it. Some data printed for defunct
processes is irrelevant.
If no options to select processes are specified, ps will
report all processes associated with the controlling termi-
nal. If there is no controlling terminal, there will be no
report other than the header.
ps -ef or ps -o stime may not report the actual start of a
tty login session, but rather an earlier time, when a getty
was last respawned on the tty line.
ps is CSI-enabled except for login names (usernames).
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