ps

ps is used for viewing process status

Usage/Output

$ ps
PID        TTY     STAT   TIME          CMD
5140     pts/4    Ss        00:00:00     bash
61244    pts/4    R+        00:00:00     ps

• PID = the process Id
• TTY = the terminal device where the process is running
• STAT = the current status of the process. It can be ‘s’ for sleeping, ‘r’ for running. See the man page ps(1) for more info
• TIME = the CPU time that the process has used. Note that this is different than the ‘wall-clock’ time
• CMD = the command used to start the process

Commonly Used Options

There are many options available to the ps command. To make things more confusing, you can specify options in 3 different styles - Unix, BSD, and GNU. Most people use the BSD style, as it is seemingly most comfortable to use (less typing).

Here are some of the most commonly used BSD-style options:

• ps x = show all of your running processes
• ps ax = show all processes on the system, not just those that you own
• ps u = Include more detailed information on processes
• ps w = show full command names, not just what fits on a single line
• ps u $$ = status of the current process
• ps aux = show all processes for all users with verbose detail