.TH PS 1
.SH NAME
ps \- display process status
.SH SYNOPSIS
ps [axltpku] [ARG2 ARG3 ...]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I Ps\^
is used to display the status of some or all of the processes
currently in the operating system.
If no options are specified, the program displays a heading, followed by
one line for each process which belongs to the user who has issued the
.I ps\^
command.
Each line has four columns, namely:

.in+13
.ti-13
TIME\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ the total system and user mode CPU time used by the process.
The time is printed out in the form "mmm:ss", where mmm is the number of
minutes and ss is the number of seconds.

.ti-13
TTY\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ the name of the controlling terminal associated with the
process.  If the terminal name is of the conventional form "ttyxx", the last
two characters of the name are printed.
The console terminal ("/dev/console") is denoted by "co".

.ti-13
PID\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ the process number of the process.

.ti-13
COMMAND\ \ \ \ \ an educated guess at the program name and arguments from the
last "exec" (see EXEC(2)) performed by the process.
It is possible for a process to falsify or destroy this information, so
don't stake your life on its accuracy.
If the process is a "zombie", that is, if it has done an EXIT(2) call, but
its parent process is alive and has not done a WAIT(2) for it, the COMMAND
column for the process will contain the words "<PROCESS EXITING>".

.in-13
The "l" option is used to request a "long" listing.  The long listing
has additional columns displayed before the ones listed above.
These columns are

.in+13
.ti-13
SIZE\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ the number of kilobytes in the process image.

.ti-13
WAITING-FOR\ \ this column represents symbolically the
state of the process.
A process in an SWAIT (long sleep) state is indicated by the name
of the kernel condition which the process is waiting on.
A process in an SSLEEP (short sleep) state has the name of the condition
in uppercase letters.
A number in this field indicates that the process is awaiting a condition
for which
.I ps\^
does not have a name; the number is a kernel virtual data space address (in octal).
Other process states are indicated by: <ready> (SRUN), <stopped> (SSTOP),
<newborn> (SIDL), <zombie> (SZOMB), and <empty> (SEMPTY).
A process which resides in main memory is indicated by an asterisk immediately
to the left of the WAITING-FOR field.

.ti-13
LEVEL\ \ \ \ \ \ \ scheduler queue level.  The best level to be at is 31,
and the worst is 0.
However, processes should normally be in the range 0-15, with only the
"swapper" process (process 0) at priority 16.  The priorities 16-31
are "real-time" priorities which the system does not change.
Levels 0-15 are adjusted dynamically by the system based on program
behavior.

.ti-13
UID\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ the real user ID of the process owner.

.ti-13
PPID\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ the process number of this process' parent process.

.in-13
The "a" option indicates that a list of processes for all user ID's is to
be displayed;  the "x" option causes processes with no controlling terminal
to be listed.
The "t" option indicates that processes for a given terminal (specified
by a later argument) are to be listed.
If no argument or a null argument corresponds to the "t" option, processes
for all terminals are listed.
The format of the additional argument is
.I XX
where
.I /dev/ttyXX
is the name of the terminal's character special device file.

The "p" option indicates that information is to be displayed concerning a
particular process, whose process number is specified by a later argument.

The "k" option allows the user to specify that an alternate core file is
to be used instead of "/dev/mem".  Similarly, the "u" option indicates
that an alternate "namelist" file is to be used instead of "/unix".
Only the superuser is permitted to make use of the "k" and "u" options.
These options are normally used to perform autopsies on system core
dumps.
.SH FILES
.ta 2i
/unix	default system namelist
.br
/dev/mem	default core image file
.br
/dev	searched to find swap device and tty names
.SH "SEE ALSO
kill(1), pstat(1), nice(1), nice(2).
.SH NOTES
Since the system is not affected by
.I ps,
things can change while
.I ps\^
is running;
thus, the picture it gives is only an approximation to a snapshot of the
system status.