[-N system] [-p pid[,pid...]] [-t tty[,tty...]] [-U user[,user...]]
     ps [-L]

DESCRIPTION

     The ps utility displays a header line, followed by lines containing
     information about all of your processes that have controlling terminals.

     A different set of processes can be selected for display by using any
     combination of the -a, -G, -p, -T, -t, and -U options.  If more than one
     of these options are given, then ps will select all processes which are
     matched by at least one of the given options.

     For the processes which have been selected for display, ps will usually
     display one line per process.  The -H option may result in multiple out-
     put lines (one line per thread) for some processes.  By default all of
     these output lines are sorted first by controlling terminal, then by
     process ID.  The -m, -r, -u, and -v options will change the sort order.
     If more than one sorting option was given, then the selected processes
     will be sorted by the last sorting option which was specified.

     For the processes which have been selected for display, the information
     to display is selected based on a set of keywords (see the -L, -O, and -o
     options).  The default output format includes, for each process, the
     process' ID, controlling terminal, CPU time (including both user and sys-
     tem time), state, and associated command.

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

     The options are as follows:

     -a      Display information about other users' processes as well as your
             own.  This will skip any processes which do not have a control-
             ling terminal, unless the -x option is also specified.  This can
             be disabled by setting the security.bsd.see_other_uids sysctl to
             zero.

     -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.

     -G      Display information about processes which are running with the
             specified real group IDs.

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

     -M      Extract values associated with the name list from the specified
             core instead of the currently running system.

     -m      Sort by memory usage, instead of the combination of controlling
             terminal and process ID.

     -N      Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the
             default, which is the kernel image the system has booted from.

     -O      Add the information associated with the space or comma separated
             list of keywords specified, after the process ID, in the default
             information display.  Keywords may be appended with an equals
             (`=') sign and a string.  This causes the printed header to use
             the specified string instead of the standard header.

     -o      Display information associated with the space or comma separated
             list of keywords specified.  The last keyword in the list may be
             appended with an equals (`=') sign and a string that spans the
             rest of the argument and can contain space and comma characters.
             This causes the printed header to use the specified string
             instead of the standard header.  Multiple keywords may also be
             given in the form of more than one -o option.  So the header
             texts for multiple keywords can be changed.  If all keywords have
             empty header texts, no header line is written.

     -p      Display information about processes which match the specified
             process IDs.

     -r      Sort by current CPU usage, instead of the combination of control-
             ling terminal and process ID.

     -S      Change the way the process time is calculated by summing all
             exited 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 devices.

     -U      Display the processes belonging to the specified usernames.

     -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
             last.

     -Z      Add mac(4) label to the list of keywords for which ps will dis-
             play information.

     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_KTHREAD           0x00004      Kernel thread
               P_NOLOAD            0x00008      Ignore during load avg
                                                calculations
               P_PPWAIT            0x00010      Parent is waiting for child to
                                                exec/exit
               P_PROFIL            0x00020      Has started profiling
               P_STOPPROF          0x00040      Has thread in requesting to
                                                stop prof
               P_SUGID             0x00100      Had set id privileges since
                                                last exec
               P_SYSTEM            0x00200      System proc: no sigs, stats or
                                                swapping
               P_SINGLE_EXIT       0x00400      Threads suspending should
                                                exit, not wait
               P_TRACED            0x00800      Debugged process being traced
               P_WAITED            0x01000      Someone is waiting for us
               P_WEXIT             0x02000      Working on exiting
               P_EXEC              0x04000      Process called exec
               P_SA                0x08000      Using scheduler activations
               P_CONTINUED         0x10000      Proc has continued from a
                                                stopped state
               P_STOPPED_SIG       0x20000      Stopped due to SIGSTOP/SIGTSTP
               P_STOPPED_TRACE     0x40000      Stopped because of tracing
               P_STOPPED_SINGLE    0x80000      Only one thread can continue
               P_PROTECTED         0x100000     Do not kill on memory
                                                overcommit
               P_SIGEVENT          0x200000     Process pending signals
                                                changed
               P_JAILED            0x1000000    Process is in jail
               P_INEXEC            0x4000000    Process is in execve()

     mwchan    The event name if the process is blocked normally, or the lock
               name if the process is blocked on a lock.  See the wchan and
               lockname keywords for details.

     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 characters, for example,
               ``RWNA''.  The first character indicates the run state of the
               process:

               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).
               L       Marks a process that is waiting to acquire a lock.
               R       Marks a runnable process.
               S       Marks a process that is sleeping for less than about 20
                       seconds.
               T       Marks a stopped process.
               W       Marks an idle interrupt thread.
               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.
               E       The process is trying to exit.
               J       Marks a process which is in jail(2).  The hostname of
                       the prison can be found in /proc/<pid>/status.
               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 is a session leader.
               V       The process is suspended during a vfork(2).
               W       The process is swapped out.
               X       The process is being traced or debugged.

     tt        An abbreviation for the pathname of the controlling terminal,
     located (usually because it has not been set, as is the case of system
     processes and/or kernel threads) the command name is printed within
     square brackets.  The ps utility first tries to obtain the arguments
     cached by the kernel (if they were shorter than the value of the
     kern.ps_arg_cache_limit sysctl).  The process can change the arguments
     shown with setproctitle(3).  Otherwise, ps makes an educated guess as to
     the file name and arguments given when the process was created by examin-
     ing memory or the swap area.  The method is inherently somewhat unreli-
     able and in any event a process is entitled to destroy this information.
     The ucomm (accounting) keyword can, however, be depended on.  If the
     arguments are unavailable or do not agree with the ucomm keyword, the
     value for the ucomm keyword is appended to the arguments in parentheses.

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)
     args       command and arguments
     comm       command
     command    command and arguments
     cpu        short-term CPU usage factor (for scheduling)
     etime      elapsed running time
     flags      the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias f)
     inblk      total blocks read (alias inblock)
     jid        jail ID
     jobc       job control count
     ktrace     tracing flags
     label      MAC label
     lim        memoryuse limit
     lockname   lock currently blocked on (as a symbolic name)
     logname    login name of user who started the session
     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)
     mwchan     wait channel or lock currently blocked on
     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)
     paddr      swap address
     pagein     pageins (same as majflt)
     pgid       process group number
     pid        process ID
     poip       pageouts in progress
     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
     tsid       control terminal session ID
     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)

ENVIRONMENT

     The following environment variables affect the execution of ps:

     COLUMNS  If set, specifies the user's preferred output width in column
              positions.  By default, ps attempts to automatically determine
              the terminal width.

FILES

     /boot/kernel/kernel  default system namelist
     /proc                the mount point of procfs(5)

SEE ALSO

     kill(1), pgrep(1), pkill(1), w(1), kvm(3), strftime(3), mac(4),
     procfs(5), pstat(8), sysctl(8), mutex(9)

STANDARDS

     For historical reasons, the ps utility under FreeBSD supports a different
     set of options from what is described by IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2''),
     and what is supported on non-BSD operating systems.

HISTORY

     The ps command appeared in Version 4 AT&T UNIX.

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.

     The ps utility does not correctly display argument lists containing
     multibyte characters.