Linux Pocket Guide, 2nd Edition

Name

ps — stdin  stdout  - file  -- opt  --help  --version

Synopsis

ps [options]

The ps command displays information about your running processes, and optionally the processes of other users.

$ ps
  PID TTY          TIME CMD
 4706 pts/2    00:00:01 bash
15007 pts/2    00:00:00 emacs
16729 pts/2    00:00:00 ps

ps has at least 80 options; we’ll cover just a few useful combinations. If the options seem arbitrary or inconsistent, it’s because the supplied ps command (GNU ps) incorporates the features of several other Unix ps commands, attempting to be compatible with all of them.

To view your processes:

$ ps -ux

all of user smith’s processes:

$ ps -U smith

all occurrences of a program:

$ ps -C program_name

processes on terminal N:

$ ps -tN

particular processes 1, 2, and 3505:

$ ps -p1,2,3505

all processes with command lines truncated to screen width:

$ ps -ef

all processes with full command lines:

$ ps -efww

and all processes in a threaded view, which indents child processes below their parents:

$ ps -efH

Remember, you can extract information more finely from the output of ps using grep and other filter programs:

$ ps -ux | grep myprogram