PS(1)

NAME
ps - report a snapshot of the current processes.

SYNOPSIS
ps [options]

DESCRIPTION
ps displays information about a selection of the active processes. If you want a repetitive update of the selection and the displayed information, use top(1) instead.

This version of ps accepts several kinds of options:
1   UNIX options, which may be grouped and must be preceeded by a dash.
2   BSD options, which may be grouped and must not be used with a dash.
3   GNU long options, which are preceeded by two dashes.

Options of different types may be freely mixed, but conflicts can appear. There are some synonomous options, which are functionally identical, due to the many standards and ps implementations that this ps is compatible with.

Note that "ps -aux" is distinct from "ps aux". The POSIX and UNIX standards require that "ps -aux" print all processes owned by a user named "x", as well as printing all processes that would be selected by the -a option. If the user named "x" does not exist, this ps may interpret the command as "ps aux" instead and print a warning. This behavior is intended to aid in transitioning old scripts and habits. It is fragile, subject to change, and thus should not be relied upon.

By default, ps selects all processes with the same effective user ID (EUID) as the curent user and associated with the same terminal as the invoker. It displays the process ID (PID), the terminal associated with the process (TTY), the cumulated CPU time in [dd-]hh:mm:ss format (TIME), and the executable name (CMD). Output is unsorted by default.

The use of BSD-style options will add process state (STAT) to the default display and show the command args (COMMAND) instead of the executable name. You can override this with the PS_FORMAT environment variable. The use of BSD-style options will also change the process selection to include processes on other terminals (TTYs) that are owned by you; alternately, this may be described as setting the selection to be the set of all processes filtered to exclude processes owned by other users or not on a terminal. These effects are not considered when options are described as being "identical" below, so -M will be considered identical to Z and so on.

Except as described below, process selection options are additive. The default selection is discarded, and then the selected processes are added to the set of processes to be displayed. A process will thus be shown if it meets any of the given selection criteria.

EXAMPLES

To see every process on the system using standard syntax:
    ps -e
    ps -ef
    ps -eF
    ps -ely

To see every process on the system using BSD syntax:
    ps ax
    ps axu

To print a process tree:
    ps -ejH
    ps axjf

To get info about threads:
    ps -eLf
    ps axms

To get security info:
    ps -eo euser,ruser,suser,fuser,f,comm,label
    ps axZ
    ps -eM

To see every process running as root (real & effective ID) in user format:
    ps -U root -u root u

To see every process with a user-defined format:
    ps -eo pid,tid,class,rtprio,ni,pri,psr,pcpu,stat,wchan:14,comm
    ps axo stat,euid,ruid,tty,tpgid,sess,pgrp,ppid,pid,pcpu,comm
    ps -eopid,tt,user,fname,tmout,f,wchan

Print only the process IDs of syslogd:
    ps -C syslogd -o pid=

Print only the name of PID 42:
    ps -p 42 -o comm=

SIMPLE PROCESS SELECTION
Select all processes. Identical to -e. Select all processes except those that fulfill the specified conditions. (negates the selection) Identical to --deselect. Select all processes associated with this terminal. Identical to the t option without any argument. Select all processes except session leaders (see getsid(2)) and processes not associated with a terminal. Lift the BSD-style "only yourself" restriction, which is imposed upon the set of all processes when some BSD-style (without "-") options are used or when the ps personality setting is BSD-like. The set of processes selected in this manner is in addition to the set of processes selected by other means. An alternate description is that this option causes ps to list all processes with a terminal (tty), or to list all processes when used together with the x option. Select all processes except session leaders. Select all processes. Identical to -A. Really all, even session leaders. This flag is obsolete and may be discontinued in a future release. It is normally implied by the a flag, and is only useful when operating in the sunos4 personality. Restrict the selection to only running processes. Lift the BSD-style "must have a tty" restriction, which is imposed upon the set of all processes when some BSD-style (without "-") options are used or when the ps personality setting is BSD-like. The set of processes selected in this manner is in addition to the set of processes selected by other means. An alternate description is that this option causes ps to list all processes owned by you (same EUID as ps), or to list all processes when used together with the a option. Select all processes except those that fulfill the specified conditions. (negates the selection) Identical to -N.

PROCESS SELECTION BY LIST
These options accept a single argument in the form of a blank-separated or comma-separated list. They can be used multiple times. For example: ps -p "1 2" -p 3,4

Select by command name.
This selects the processes whose executable name is given in cmdlist. Select by real group ID (RGID) or name.
This selects the processes whose real group name or ID is in the grplist list. The real group ID identifies the group of the user who created the process, see getgid(2). Select by effective user ID (EUID) or name.
This selects the processes whose effective user name or ID is in userlist. The effective user ID describes the user whose file access permissions are used by the process (see geteuid(2)). Identical to -u and --user. select by real user ID (RUID) or name.
It selects the processes whose real user name or ID is in the userlist list. The real user ID identifies the user who created the process, see getuid(2). Select by session OR by effective group name.
Selection by session is specified by many standards, but selection by effective group is the logical behavior that several other operating systems use. This ps will select by session when the list is completely numeric (as sessions are). Group ID numbers will work only when some group names are also specified. See the -s and --group options. Select by process ID. Identical to -p and --pid. Select by PID.
This selects the processes whose process ID numbers appear in pidlist. Identical to p and --pid. Select by session ID.
This selects the processes with a session ID specified in sesslist. Select by tty. Nearly identical to -t and --tty, but can also be used with an empty ttylist to indicate the terminal associated with ps. Using the T option is considered cleaner than using T with an empty ttylist. Select by tty.
This selects the processes associated with the terminals given in ttylist. Terminals (ttys, or screens for text output) can be specified in several forms: /dev/ttyS1, ttyS1, S1. A plain "-" may be used to select processes not attached to any terminal. Select by effective user ID (EUID) or name.
This selects the processes whose effective user name or ID is in userlist. The effective user ID describes the user whose file access permissions are used by the process (see geteuid(2)). Identical to U and --user. Select by real group ID (RGID) or name. Identical to -G. Select by real user ID (RUID) or name. Identical to -U. Select by effective group ID (EGID) or name.
This selects the processes whose effective group name or ID is in grouplist. The effective group ID describes the group whose file access permissions are used by the process (see geteuid(2)). The -g option is often an alternative to --group. Select by process ID. Identical to -p and p. Select by parent process ID. This selects the processes with a parent process ID in pidlist. That is, it selects processes that are children of those listed in pidlist. Select by session ID. Identical to -s. Select by terminal. Identical to -t and t. Select by effective user ID (EUID) or name. Identical to -u and U. Identical to --sid 123. Identical to --pid 123.

OUTPUT FORMAT CONTROL
These options are used to choose the information displayed by ps. The output may differ by personality.

extra full format. See the -f option, which -F implies. is like -o, but preloaded with some default columns. Identical to -o pid,format,state,tname,time,command or -o pid,format,tname,time,cmd, see -o below. is preloaded o (overloaded).
The BSD O option can act like -O (user-defined output format with some common fields predefined) or can be used to specify sort order. Heuristics are used to determine the behavior of this option. To ensure that the desired behavior is obtained (sorting or formatting), specify the option in some other way (e.g. with -O or --sort). When used as a formatting option, it is identical to -O, with the BSD personality. Add a column of security data. Identical to Z. (for SE Linux) Register format. Add a column of security data. Identical to -M. (for SE Linux) Show different scheduler information for the -l option. does full-format listing. This option can be combined with many other UNIX-style options to add additional columns. It also causes the command arguments to be printed. When used with -L, the NLWP (number of threads) and LWP (thread ID) columns will be added. See the c option, the format keyword args, and the format keyword comm. BSD job control format. jobs format display BSD long format. long format. The -y option is often useful with this. specify user-defined format. Identical to -o and --format. user-defined format.
format is a single argument in the form of a blank-separated or comma-separated list, which offers a way to specify individual output columns. The recognized keywords are described in the STANDARD FORMAT SPECIFIERS section below. Headers may be renamed (ps -o pid,ruser=RealUser -o comm=Command) as desired. If all column headers are empty (ps -o pid= -o comm=) then the header line will not be output. Column width will increase as needed for wide headers; this may be used to widen up columns such as WCHAN (ps -o pid,wchan=WIDE-WCHAN-COLUMN -o comm). Explicit width control (ps opid,wchan:42,cmd) is offered too. The behavior of ps -o pid=X,comm=Y varies with personality; output may be one column named "X,comm=Y" or two columns named "X" and "Y". Use multiple -o options when in doubt. Use the PS_FORMAT environment variable to specify a default as desired; DefSysV and DefBSD are macros that may be used to choose the default UNIX or BSD columns. display signal format display user-oriented format display virtual memory format Do not show flags; show rss in place of addr. This option can only be used with -l. user-defined format. Identical to -o and o. Display security context format. (for SE Linux)

OUTPUT MODIFIERS
show process hierarchy (forest) Specify namelist file. Identical to -n, see -n above. Sorting order. (overloaded)
The BSD O option can act like -O (user-defined output format with some common fields predefined) or can be used to specify sort order. Heuristics are used to determine the behavior of this option. To ensure that the desired behavior is obtained (sorting or formatting), specify the option in some other way (e.g. with -O or --sort). For sorting, obsolete BSD O option syntax is O[+|-]k1[,[+|-]k2[,...]]. It orders the processes listing according to the multilevel sort specified by the sequence of one-letter short keys k1, k2, ... described in the OBSOLETE SORT KEYS section below. The "+" is currently optional, merely re-iterating the default direction on a key, but may help to distinguish an O sort from an O format. The "-" reverses direction only on the key it precedes. Sum up some information, such as CPU usage, from dead child processes into their parent. This is useful for examining a system where a parent process repeatedly forks off short-lived children to do work. Show the true command name. This is derived from the name of the executable file, rather than from the argv value. Command arguments and any modifications to them (see setproctitle(3)) are thus not shown. This option effectively turns the args format keyword into the comm format keyword; it is useful with the -f format option and with the various BSD-style format options, which all normally display the command arguments. See the -f option, the format keyword args, and the format keyword comm. Show the environment after the command. ASCII-art process hierarchy (forest) No header. (or, one header per screen in the BSD personality)
The h option is problematic. Standard BSD ps uses this option to print a header on each page of output, but older Linux ps uses this option to totally disable the header. This version of ps follows the Linux usage of not printing the header unless the BSD personality has been selected, in which case it prints a header on each page of output. Regardless of the current personality, you can use the long options --headers and --no-headers to enable printing headers each page or disable headers entirely, respectively. specify sorting order. Sorting syntax is [+|-]key[,[+|-]key[,...]] Choose a multi-letter key from the STANDARD FORMAT SPECIFIERS section. The "+" is optional since default direction is increasing numerical or lexicographic order. Identical to --sort. Examples:
ps jaxkuid,-ppid,+pid
ps axk comm o comm,args
ps kstart_time -ef set namelist file. Identical to N.
The namelist file is needed for a proper WCHAN display, and must match the current Linux kernel exactly for correct output. Without this option, the default search path for the namelist is:
    $PS_SYSMAP
    $PS_SYSTEM_MAP
    /proc/*/wchan
    /boot/System.map-`uname -r`
    /boot/System.map
    /lib/modules/`uname -r`/System.map
    /usr/src/linux/System.map
    /System.map Numeric output for WCHAN and USER. (including all types of UID and GID) Wide output. Use this option twice for unlimited width. Wide output. Use this option twice for unlimited width. set screen width set screen width include some dead child process data (as a sum with the parent) ASCII art process tree repeat header lines, one per page of output print no header line at all set screen height set screen height specify sorting order. Sorting syntax is [+|-]key[,[+|-]key[,...]] Choose a multi-letter key from the STANDARD FORMAT SPECIFIERS section. The "+" is optional since default direction is increasing numerical or lexicographic order. Identical to k. For example: ps jax --sort=uid,-ppid,+pid set screen width

THREAD DISPLAY
Show threads as if they were processes Show threads, possibly with LWP and NLWP columns Show threads, possibly with SPID column Show threads after processes Show threads after processes

OTHER INFORMATION
List all format specifiers. Print the procps version. Print the procps version. Print a help message. Print debugging info. Print the procps version.

NOTES
This ps works by reading the virtual files in /proc. This ps does not need to be setuid kmem or have any privileges to run. Do not give this ps any special permissions. This ps needs access to namelist data for proper WCHAN display. For kernels prior to 2.6, the System.map file must be installed. CPU usage is currently expressed as the percentage of time spent running during the entire lifetime of a process. This is not ideal, and it does not conform to the standards that ps otherwise conforms to. CPU usage is unlikely to add up to exactly 100%. The SIZE and RSS fields don't count some parts of a process including the page tables, kernel stack, struct thread_info, and struct task_struct. This is usually at least 20 KiB of memory that is always resident. SIZE is the virtual size of the process (code+data+stack). Processes marked <defunct> are dead processes (so-called "zombies") that remain because their parent has not destroyed them properly. These processes will be destroyed by init(8) if the parent process exits.

PROCESS FLAGS
The sum of these values is displayed in the "F" column, which is provided by the flags output specifier.
1   forked but didn't exec
4   used super-user privileges

PROCESS STATE CODES
Here are the different values that the s, stat and state output specifiers (header "STAT" or "S") will display to describe the state of a process.
D   Uninterruptible sleep (usually IO)
R   Running or runnable (on run queue)
S   Interruptible sleep (waiting for an event to complete)
T   Stopped, either by a job control signal or because it is being traced.
W   paging (not valid since the 2.6.xx kernel)
X   dead (should never be seen)
Z   Defunct ("zombie") process, terminated but not reaped by its parent.

For BSD formats and when the stat keyword is used, additional characters may be displayed:
<   high-priority (not nice to other users)
N   low-priority (nice to other users)
L   has pages locked into memory (for real-time and custom IO)
s   is a session leader
l   is multi-threaded (using CLONE_THREAD, like NPTL pthreads do)
+   is in the foreground process group

OBSOLETE SORT KEYS
These keys are used by the BSD O option (when it is used for sorting). The GNU --sort option doesn't use these keys, but the specifiers described below in the STANDARD FORMAT SPECIFIERS section. Note that the values used in sorting are the internal values ps uses and not the "cooked" values used in some of the output format fields (e.g. sorting on tty will sort into device number, not according to the terminal name displayed). Pipe ps output into the sort(1) command if you want to sort the cooked values.
KEY | LONG | DESCRIPTION
c | cmd | simple name of executable
C | pcpu | cpu utilization
f | flags | flags as in long format F field
g | pgrp | process group ID
G | tpgid | controlling tty process group ID
j | cutime | cumulative user time
J | cstime | cumulative system time
k | utime | user time
m | min_flt | number of minor page faults
M | maj_flt | number of major page faults
n | cmin_flt | cumulative minor page faults
N | cmaj_flt | cumulative major page faults
o | session | session ID
p | pid | process ID
P | ppid | parent process ID
r | rss | resident set size
R | resident | resident pages
s | size | memory size in kilobytes
S | share | amount of shared pages
t | tty | the device number of the controling tty
T | start_time | time process was started
U | uid | user ID number
u | user | user name
v | vsize | total VM size in kB
y | priority | kernel scheduling priority

AIX FORMAT DESCRIPTORS
This ps supports AIX format descriptors, which work somewhat like the formatting codes of printf(1) and printf(3). For example, the normal default output can be produced with this: ps -eo "%p %y %x %c". The NORMAL codes are described in the next section.
CODE | NORMAL | HEADER
%C | pcpu | %CPU
%G | group | GROUP
%P | ppid | PPID
%U | user | USER
%a | args | COMMAND
%c | comm | COMMAND
%g | rgroup | RGROUP
%n | nice | NI
%p | pid | PID
%r | pgid | PGID
%t | etime | ELAPSED
%u | ruser | RUSER
%x | time | TIME
%y | tty | TTY
%z | vsz | VSZ

STANDARD FORMAT SPECIFIERS
Here are the different keywords that may be used to control the output format (e.g. with option -o) or to sort the selected processes with the GNU-style --sort option. For example: ps -eo pid,user,args --sort user This version of ps tries to recognize most of the keywords used in other implementations of ps. The following user-defined format specifiers may contain spaces: args, cmd, comm, command, fname, ucmd, ucomm, lstart, bsdstart, start. Some keywords may not be available for sorting.
CODE | HEADER | DESCRIPTION
%cpu | %CPU | cpu utilization of the process in "##.#" format. Currently, it is the CPU time used divided by the time the process has been running (cputime/realtime ratio), expressed as a percentage. It will not add up to 100% unless you are lucky. (alias pcpu).
%mem | %MEM | ratio of the process's resident set size to the physical memory on the machine, expressed as a percentage. (alias pmem).
args | COMMAND | command with all its arguments as a string. Modifications to the arguments may be shown. The output in this column may contain spaces. A process marked <defunct> is partly dead, waiting to be fully destroyed by its parent. Sometimes the process args will be unavailable; when this happens, ps will instead print the executable name in brackets. (alias cmd, command). See also the comm format keyword, the -f option, and the c option. When specified last, this column will extend to the edge of the display. If ps can not determine display width, as when output is redirected (piped) into a file or another command, the output width is undefined. (it may be 80, unlimited, determined by the TERM variable, and so on) The COLUMNS environment variable or --cols option may be used to exactly determine the width in this case. The w or -w option may be also be used to adjust width.
blocked | BLOCKED | mask of the blocked signals, see signal(7). According to the width of the field, a 32-bit or 64-bit mask in hexadecimal format is displayed. (alias sig_block, sigmask).
bsdstart | START | time the command started. If the process was started less than 24 hours ago, the output format is " HH:MM", else it is "mmm dd" (where mmm is the three letters of the month).
bsdtime | TIME | accumulated cpu time, user + system. The display format is usualy "MMM:SS", but can be shifted to the right if the process used more than 999 minutes of cpu time.
c | C | processor utilization. Currently, this is the integer value of the percent usage over the lifetime of the process. (see %cpu).
caught | CAUGHT | mask of the caught signals, see signal(7). According to the width of the field, a 32 or 64 bits mask in hexadecimal format is displayed. (alias sig_catch, sigcatch).
class | CLS | scheduling class of the process. (alias policy, cls). Field's possible values are: - not reported TS SCHED_OTHER FF SCHED_FIFO RR SCHED_RR ? unknown value
cls | CLS | scheduling class of the process. (alias policy, class). Field's possible values are: - not reported TS SCHED_OTHER FF SCHED_FIFO RR SCHED_RR ? unknown value
cmd | CMD | see args. (alias args, command).
comm | COMMAND | command name (only the executable name). Modifications to the command name will not be shown. A process marked <defunct> is partly dead, waiting to be fully destroyed by its parent. The output in this column may contain spaces. (alias ucmd, ucomm). See also the args format keyword, the -f option, and the c option. When specified last, this column will extend to the edge of the display. If ps can not determine display width, as when output is redirected (piped) into a file or another command, the output width is undefined. (it may be 80, unlimited, determined by the TERM variable, and so on) The COLUMNS environment variable or --cols option may be used to exactly determine the width in this case. The w or -w option may be also be used to adjust width.
command | COMMAND | see args. (alias args, cmd).
cp | CP | per-mill (tenths of a percent) CPU usage. (see %cpu).
cputime | TIME | cumulative CPU time, "[dd-]hh:mm:ss" format. (alias time).
egid | EGID | effective group ID number of the process as a decimal integer. (alias gid).
egroup | EGROUP | 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. (alias group).
eip | EIP | instruction pointer.
esp | ESP | stack pointer.
etime | ELAPSED | elapsed time since the process was started, in the form [[dd-]hh:]mm:ss.
euid | EUID | effective user ID. (alias uid).
euser | EUSER | effective user name. This will be the textual user ID, if it can be obtained and the field width permits, or a decimal representation otherwise. The n option can be used to force the decimal representation. (alias uname, user).
f | F | flags associated with the process, see the PROCESS FLAGS section. (alias flag, flags).
fgid | FGID | filesystem access group ID. (alias fsgid).
fgroup | FGROUP | filesystem access group ID. This will be the textual user ID, if it can be obtained and the field width permits, or a decimal representation otherwise. (alias fsgroup).
flag | F | see f. (alias f, flags).
flags | F | see f. (alias f, flag).
fname | COMMAND | first 8 bytes of the base name of the process's executable file. The output in this column may contain spaces.
fuid | FUID | filesystem access user ID. (alias fsuid).
fuser | FUSER | filesystem access user ID. This will be the textual user ID, if it can be obtained and the field width permits, or a decimal representation otherwise.
gid | GID | see egid. (alias egid).
group | GROUP | see egroup. (alias egroup).
ignored | IGNORED | mask of the ignored signals, see signal(7). According to the width of the field, a 32-bit or 64-bit mask in hexadecimal format is displayed. (alias sig_ignore, sigignore).
label | LABEL | security label, most commonly used for SE Linux context data. This is for the Mandatory Access Control ("MAC") found on high-security systems.
lstart | STARTED | time the command started.
lwp | LWP | lwp (light weight process, or thread) ID of the lwp being reported. (alias spid, tid).
ni | NI | nice value. This ranges from 19 (nicest) to -20 (not nice to others), see nice(1). (alias nice).
nice | NI | see ni. (alias ni).
nlwp | NLWP | number of lwps (threads) in the process. (alias thcount).
nwchan | WCHAN | address of the kernel function where the process is sleeping (use wchan if you want the kernel function name). Running tasks will display a dash ('-') in this column.
pcpu | %CPU | see %cpu. (alias %cpu).
pending | PENDING | mask of the pending signals. See signal(7). Signals pending on the process are distinct from signals pending on individual threads. Use the m option or the -m option to see both. According to the width of the field, a 32-bit or 64-bit mask in hexadecimal format is displayed. (alias sig).
pgid | PGID | process group ID or, equivalently, the process ID of the process group leader. (alias pgrp).
pgrp | PGRP | see pgid. (alias pgid).
pid | PID | process ID number of the process.
pmem | %MEM | see %mem. (alias %mem).
policy | POL | scheduling class of the process. (alias class, cls). Possible values are: - not reported TS SCHED_OTHER FF SCHED_FIFO RR SCHED_RR ? unknown value
ppid | PPID | parent process ID.
psr | PSR | processor that process is currently assigned to.
rgid | RGID | real group ID.
rgroup | RGROUP | real group name. This will be the textual group ID, if it can be obtained and the field width permits, or a decimal representation otherwise.
rss | RSS | resident set size, the non-swapped physical memory that a task has used (in kiloBytes). (alias rssize, rsz).
rssize | RSS | see rss. (alias rss, rsz).
rsz | RSZ | see rss. (alias rss, rssize).
rtprio | RTPRIO | realtime priority.
ruid | RUID | real user ID.
ruser | RUSER | real user ID. This will be the textual user ID, if it can be obtained and the field width permits, or a decimal representation otherwise.
s | S | minimal state display (one character). See section PROCESS STATE CODES for the different values. See also stat if you want additionnal information displayed. (alias state).
sched | SCH | scheduling policy of the process. The policies sched_other, sched_fifo, and sched_rr are respectively displayed as 0, 1, and 2.
sess | SESS | session ID or, equivalently, the process ID of the session leader. (alias session, sid).
sgi_p | P | processor that the process is currently executing on. Displays "*" if the process is not currently running or runnable.
sgid | SGID | saved group ID. (alias svgid).
sgroup | SGROUP | saved group name. This will be the textual group ID, if it can be obtained and the field width permits, or a decimal representation otherwise.
sid | SID | see sess. (alias sess, session).
sig | PENDING | see pending. (alias pending, sig_pend).
sigcatch | CAUGHT | see caught. (alias caught, sig_catch).
sigignore | IGNORED | see ignored. (alias ignored, sig_ignore).
sigmask | BLOCKED | see blocked. (alias blocked, sig_block).
size | SZ | approximate amount of swap space that would be required if the process were to dirty all writable pages and then be swapped out. This number is very rough!
spid | SPID | see lwp. (alias lwp, tid).
stackp | STACKP | address of the bottom (start) of stack for the process.
start | STARTED | time the command started. If the process was started less than 24 hours ago, the output format is "HH:MM:SS", else it is " mmm dd" (where mmm is a three-letter month name).
start_time | START | starting time or date of the process. Only the year will be displayed if the process was not started the same year ps was invoked, or "mmmdd" if it was not started the same day, or "HH:MM" otherwise.
stat | STAT | multi-character process state. See section PROCESS STATE CODES for the different values meaning. See also s and state if you just want the first character displayed.
state | S | see s. (alias s).
suid | SUID | saved user ID. (alias svuid).
suser | SUSER | saved user name. This will be the textual user ID, if it can be obtained and the field width permits, or a decimal representation otherwise. (alias svuser).
svgid | SVGID | see sgid. (alias sgid).
svuid | SVUID | see suid. (alias suid).
sz | SZ | size in physical pages of the core image of the process. This includes text, data, and stack space. Device mappings are currently excluded; this is subject to change. See vsz and rss.
thcount | THCNT | see nlwp. (alias nlwp). number of kernel threads owned by the process.
tid | TID | see lwp. (alias lwp).
time | TIME | cumulative CPU time, "[dd-]hh:mm:ss" format. (alias cputime).
tname | TTY | controlling tty (terminal). (alias tt, tty).
tpgid | TPGID | ID of the foreground process group on the tty (terminal) that the process is connected to, or -1 if the process is not connected to a tty.
tt | TT | controlling tty (terminal). (alias tname, tty).
tty | TT | controlling tty (terminal). (alias tname, tt).
ucmd | CMD | see comm. (alias comm, ucomm).
ucomm | COMMAND | see comm. (alias comm, ucmd).
uid | UID | see euid. (alias euid).
uname | USER | see euser. (alias euser, user).
user | USER | see euser. (alias euser, uname).
vsize | VSZ | see vsz. (alias vsz).
vsz | VSZ | virtual memory size of the process in KiB (1024-byte units). Device mappings are currently excluded; this is subject to change. (alias vsize).
wchan | WCHAN | name of the kernel function in which the process is sleeping, a "-" if the process is running, or a "*" if the process is multi-threaded and ps is not displaying threads.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables could affect ps:

COLUMNS
    Override default display width.

LINES
    Override default display height.

PS_PERSONALITY
    Set to one of posix, old, linux, bsd, sun, digital... (see section PERSONALITY below).

CMD_ENV
    Set to one of posix, old, linux, bsd, sun, digital... (see section PERSONALITY below).

I_WANT_A_BROKEN_PS
    Force obsolete command line interpretation.

LC_TIME
    Date format.

PS_COLORS
    Not currently supported.

PS_FORMAT
    Default output format override. You may set this to a format string of the type used for the -o option. The DefSysV and DefBSD values are particularly useful.

PS_SYSMAP
    Default namelist (System.map) location.

PS_SYSTEM_MAP
    Default namelist (System.map) location.

POSIXLY_CORRECT
    Don't find excuses to ignore bad "features".

POSIX2
    When set to "on", acts as POSIXLY_CORRECT.

UNIX95
    Don't find excuses to ignore bad "features".

_XPG
    Cancel CMD_ENV=irix non-standard behavior.

In general, it is a bad idea to set these variables. The one exception is CMD_ENV or PS_PERSONALITY, which could be set to Linux for normal systems. Without that setting, ps follows the useless and bad parts of the Unix98 standard.

PERSONALITY
390 | like the S/390 OpenEdition ps
aix | like AIX ps
bsd | like FreeBSD ps (totally non-standard)
compaq | like Digital Unix ps
debian | like the old Debian ps
digital | like Tru64 (was Digital Unix, was OSF/1) ps
gnu | like the old Debian ps
hp | like HP-UX ps
hpux | like HP-UX ps
irix | like Irix ps
linux | ***** RECOMMENDED *****
old | like the original Linux ps (totally non-standard)
os390 | like OS/390 Open Edition ps
posix | standard
s390 | like OS/390 Open Edition ps
sco | like SCO ps
sgi | like Irix ps
solaris2 | like Solaris 2+ (SunOS 5) ps
sunos4 | like SunOS 4 (Solaris 1) ps (totally non-standard)
svr4 | standard
sysv | standard
tru64 | like Tru64 (was Digital Unix, was OSF/1) ps
unix | standard
unix95 | standard
unix98 | standard

SEE ALSO
top(1), pgrep(1), pstree(1), proc(5).

STANDARDS
This ps conforms to:

1   Version 2 of the Single Unix Specification
2   The Open Group Technical Standard Base Specifications, Issue 6
3   IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 Edition
4   X/Open System Interfaces Extension [UP XSI]
5   ISO/IEC 9945:2003

AUTHOR
ps was originally written by Branko Lankester <lankeste@fwi.uva.nl>. Michael K. Johnson <johnsonm@redhat.com> re-wrote it significantly to use the proc filesystem, changing a few things in the process. Michael Shields <mjshield@nyx.cs.du.edu> added the pid-list feature. Charles Blake <cblake@bbn.com> added multi-level sorting, the dirent-style library, the device name-to-number mmaped database, the approximate binary search directly on System.map, and many code and documentation cleanups. David Mossberger-Tang wrote the generic BFD support for psupdate. Albert Cahalan <albert@users.sf.net> rewrote ps for full Unix98 and BSD support, along with some ugly hacks for obsolete and foreign syntax. Please send bug reports to <procps-feedback@lists.sf.net>. No subscription is required or suggested.