20.3 Listing Processes | HP Certified: HP-UX System Administration

Processes are listed using the ps command. The ps command listed without arguments will display all processes owned by the user who issued the command. A typical output of the command is shown next .

 $  ps  PID TTY          TIME CMD 17838 pts/ta      00:00 -sh 21828 pts/ta      00:00 ps 17817 pts/ta      00:00 telnetd $

To list all processes, you can use the -ef option with the ps command.

 #  ps -ef  UID     PID  PPID C  STIME  TTY    TIME  CMD root     0     0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:11 swapper root     1     0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:01 init root     2     0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 vhand root     3     0  1  Nov  9  ?     00:42 statdaemon root     4     0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:01 unhashdaemon root     8     0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 supsched root     9     0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 strmem root     10    0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 strweld root     11    0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 strfreebd root     12    0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 ttisr root     18    0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 lvmkd root     19    0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 lvmkd root     20    0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 lvmkd root     21    0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 lvmkd root     22    0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 lvmkd root     23    0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 lvmkd root     24    0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 smpsched root     25    0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 smpsched root     26    0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 smpsched root     27    0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 smpsched root     28    0  0  Nov  9  ?     00:00 smpsched root   2007    1  0  Oct 19  ?     0:00 /usr/sbin/rpcbind root   2949    1  0  Oct 19  ?     0:00 /usr/sbin/nfsd 4 root     28    0  0  Oct 19  ?     8:04 vxfsd root    488    1  0  Oct 19  ?     0:00 /usr/sbin/ptydaemon root   2683    1  0  Oct 19  ?     0:00 /usr/sbin/cron root   2456    1  0  Oct 19  ?     0:00 /usr/sbin/snmpdm root   2110    1  0  Oct 19  ?     0:00 /usr/sbin/inetd root   2907    1  0  Oct 19  ?     5:50 /usr/sbin/swagentd root   2760    1  0  Oct 19  ?     0:00 /opt/perf/bin/ttd root   2502    1  0  Oct 19  ?     9:01 /usr/sbin/mib2agt

This list of processes has been truncated. Depending on the applications used on your system, this process list may be quite long.

Description of Fields in the Process Table

A brief description of the different fields used in the output of the ps command are as follows .

`UID`	User ID of the owner of the process.
`PID`	Process ID, a number used to represent a process in the process table.
`PPID`	Process ID of the parent process. Your shell is the parent process of all processes created by the commands you use.
`C`	Processor utilization for scheduling.
`STIME`	Starting time of the process. If the difference between the starting time and the current time is more than 24 hours, the starting date is specified.
`TTY`	Controlling terminal of the process, usually the terminal device file used by a terminal. A question mark may be present if there is no controlling terminal; most of the processes started at boot time do not have one.
`TIME`	Cumulative execution time for the process.
`CMD`	Command name that initiated the process.

If you use the -l option with the ps command, other fields are displayed. Some of the important fields are listed here.

`NI`	Nice priority value of the process. This is a number ranging from 0 to 39, used for priority calculation by the kernel for process scheduling. (This will be discussed later in this chapter.)
`F`	Flag field that shows a number of things, including if the process is swapped out of or into the main memory. This also shows if the process is a system process.
`ADDR`	Memory address of the process.
`%CPU`	Percentage of CPU time used by the process.
`S`	State of the process (running, sleeping, stopped , etc.).
`SZ`	Size of the core of the process image in number of pages.
`WCHAN`	Event for which the process is waiting. If the process is not sleeping or waiting for any event, a hyphen is placed in this column.

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