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     ps [-aCcefhjlMmrSTuvwx] [-O fmt] [-o fmt] [-p pid] [-t tty] [-U username]
     ps [-L]


DESCRIPTION

     Ps displays a header line followed by lines containing information about
     your processes that have controlling terminals.  This information is
     sorted by controlling terminal, then by process ID.

     The information displayed is selected based on a set of keywords (see the
     -L -O and -o options).  The default output format includes, for each pro-
     cess, the process' ID, controlling terminal, cpu time (including both us-
     er and system time), state, and associated command.

     The process file system (see procfs(5) ) should be mounted when ps is ex-
     ecuted, otherwise not all information will be available.

     The options are as follows:

     -a      Display information about other users' processes as well as your
             own.

     -c      Change the ``command'' column output to just contain the exe-
             cutable 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 nor-
             mally has no effect).

     -e      Display the environment as well.

     -f      Show commandline and environment information about swapped out
             processes.  This option is honored only if the uid of the user is
             0.

     -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, sess, jobc, state, tt, time and command.

     -L      List the set of available keywords.

     -l      Display information associated with the following keywords: uid,
             pid, ppid, cpu, pri, nice, vsz, rss, wchan, state, tt, time and
             command.

     -M      Print the threads corresponding to each task.

     -m      Sort by memory usage, instead of by process ID.

     -O      Add the information associated with the space or comma separated
             list of keywords specified, after the process ID, in the default
             ited children to their parent process.

     -T      Display information about processes attached to the device asso-
             ciated with the standard input.

     -t      Display information about processes attached to the specified
             terminal device.

     -U      Display the processes belonging to the specified username.

     -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 132 columns to display information, instead of the default
             which is your window size.  If the -w option is specified more
             than once, ps will use as many columns as necessary without re-
             gard for your window size.

     -x      Display information about processes without controlling termi-
             nals.

     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.

     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_INMEM        0x00004        Loaded into memory
             P_NOCLDSTOP    0x00008        No SIGCHLD when children stop
             P_PPWAIT       0x00010        Parent is waiting for child to
                                           exec/exit
             P_PROFIL       0x00020        Has started profiling
             P_SELECT       0x00040        Selecting; wakeup/waiting danger
             P_SINTR        0x00080        Sleep is interruptible
             P_SUGID        0x00100        Had set id privileges since last
                                           exec

     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 de-
             scribed in strftime(3).

     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 ``%l:ps.1p''
             format described in strftime(3).  If the command started less
             than 7 days ago, the start time is displayed using the
             ``%a6.15p'' format.  Otherwise, the start time is displayed using
             the ``%e%b%y'' format.

     state   The state is given by a sequence of letters, for example,
             ``RWNA''. The first letter indicates the run state of the pro-
             cess:

             D       Marks a process in disk (or other short term, uninter-
                     ruptible) wait.
             I       Marks a process that is idle (sleeping for longer than
                     about 20 seconds).
             R       Marks a runnable process.
             S       Marks a process that is sleeping for less than about 20
                     seconds.
             T       Marks a stopped process.
             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.
             >       The process has specified a soft limit on memory require-
                     ments and is currently exceeding that limit; such a pro-
                     cess is (necessarily) not swapped.
             A       the process has asked for random page replacement
                     (VA_ANOM, from vadvise(2),  for example, lisp(1) in a
                     garbage collect).
             E       The process is trying to exit.
             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 has asked for FIFO page replacement (VA_SEQL,
                     from vadvise(2),  for example, a large image processing

     wchan   The event (an address in the system) on which a process waits.
             When printed numerically, the initial part of the address is
             trimmed off and the result is printed in hex, for example,
             0x80324000 prints as 324000.

     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>''.  Ps makes an educated guess as
     to the file name and arguments given when the process was created by ex-
     amining memory or the swap area.  The method is inherently somewhat unre-
     liable and in any event a process is entitled to destroy this informa-
     tion, so the names cannot be depended on too much.  The ucomm (account-
     ing) keyword can, however, be depended on.


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)
     command    command and arguments
     cpu        short-term cpu usage factor (for scheduling)
     flags      the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias f)
     inblk      total blocks read (alias inblock)
     jobc       job control count
     ktrace     tracing flags
     ktracep    tracing vnode
     lim        memoryuse limit
     logname    login name of user who started the process
     lstart     time started
     majflt     total page faults
     minflt     total page reclaims
     msgrcv     total messages received (reads from pipes/sockets)
     msgsnd     total messages sent (writes on pipes/sockets)
     nice       nice value (alias ni)
     nivcsw     total involuntary context switches
     nsigs      total signals taken (alias nsignals)
     nswap      total swaps in/out
     nvcsw      total voluntary context switches
     nwchan     wait channel (as an address)
     oublk      total blocks written (alias oublock)
     p_ru       resource usage (valid only for zombie)
     paddr      swap address
     pagein     pageins (same as majflt)
     pgid       process group number
     pid        process ID
     poip       pageouts in progress
     ppid       parent process ID
     pri        scheduling priority
     sigmask    blocked signals (alias blocked)
     sl         sleep time (in seconds; 127 = infinity)
     start      time started
     state      symbolic process state (alias stat)
     svgid      saved gid from a setgid executable
     svuid      saved uid from a setuid executable
     tdev       control terminal device number
     time       accumulated cpu time, user + system (alias cputime)
     tpgid      control terminal process group ID
     tsess      control terminal session pointer
     tsiz       text size (in Kbytes)
     tt         control terminal name (two letter abbreviation)
     tty        full name of control terminal
     uprocp     process pointer
     ucomm      name to be used for accounting
     uid        effective user ID
     upr        scheduling priority on return from system call (alias usrpri)
     user       user name (from uid)
     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)


FILES

     /dev                   special files and device names
     /var/run/dev.db        /dev name database
     /var/db/kvm_kernel.db  system namelist database
     /proc                  the mount point of procfs(5)


SEE ALSO

     kill(1),  w(1),  kvm(3),  strftime(3),  procfs(5),  pstat(8)


BUGS

     Since ps cannot run faster than the system and is run as any other sched-
     uled process, the information it displays can never be exact.

4th Berkeley Distribution       April 18, 1994                               5

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