1PS(1)                       General Commands Manual                      PS(1)
2
3
4

NAME

6       ps - process status
7

SYNOPSIS

9       ps [ aklx ] [ namelist ]
10

DESCRIPTION

12       Ps  prints  certain  indicia about active processes.  The a option asks
13       for information about all processes  with  terminals  (ordinarily  only
14       one's own processes are displayed); x asks even about processes with no
15       terminal; l asks for a long listing.  The short  listing  contains  the
16       process  ID,  tty  letter, the cumulative execution time of the process
17       and an approximation to the command line.
18
19       The long listing is columnar and contains
20
21       F      Flags associated with the process.   01:  in  core;  02:  system
22              process;  04:  locked in core (e.g. for physical I/O); 10: being
23              swapped; 20: being traced by another process.
24
25       S      The state of the process.  0: nonexistent; S: sleeping; W: wait‐
26              ing; R: running; I: intermediate; Z: terminated; T: stopped.
27
28       UID    The user ID of the process owner.
29
30       PID    The  process ID of the process; as in certain cults it is possi‐
31              ble to kill a process if you know its true name.
32
33       PPID   The process ID of the parent process.
34
35       CPU    Processor utilization for scheduling.
36
37       PRI    The priority of the process; high numbers mean low priority.
38
39       NICE   Used in priority computation.
40
41       ADDR   The core address of the process if resident, otherwise the  disk
42              address.
43
44       SZ     The size in blocks of the core image of the process.
45
46       WCHAN  The  event  for  which  the  process  is waiting or sleeping; if
47              blank, the process is running.
48
49       TTY    The controlling tty for the process.
50
51       TIME   The cumulative execution time for the process.
52
53       The command and its arguments.
54
55       A process that has exited and has a parent, but has not yet been waited
56       for  by  the parent is marked <defunct>.  Ps makes an educated guess as
57       to the file name and arguments given when the process  was  created  by
58       examining core memory or the swap area.  The method is inherently some‐
59       what unreliable and in any event a process is entitled to destroy  this
60       information, so the names cannot be counted on too much.
61
62       If  the  k option is specified, the file /usr/sys/core is used in place
63       of /dev/mem.  This is used for postmortem system debugging.  If a  sec‐
64       ond  argument  is given, it is taken to be the file containing the sys‐
65       tem's namelist.
66

FILES

68       /unix         system namelist
69       /dev/mem      core memory
70       /usr/sys/core alternate core file
71       /dev          searched to find swap device and tty names
72

SEE ALSO

74       kill(1)
75

BUGS

77       Things can change while ps is running; the picture it gives is  only  a
78       close approximation to reality.
79       Some data printed for defunct processes is irrelevant
80
81
82
83                                     PDP11                               PS(1)