PS(1) FreeBSD General Commands Manual PS(1)
NAME
ps - process status
SYNOPSIS
ps [--libxo] [-AaCcdefHhjlmrSTuvwXxZ] [-O fmt] [-o fmt]
[-D up | down | both] [-G gid[,gid...]] [-J jid[,jid...]] [-M core]
[-N system] [-p pid[,pid...]] [-t tty[,tty...]] [-U user[,user...]]
ps [--libxo] -L
DESCRIPTION
The ps utility displays information about a selection of processes. Its
traditional text style output consists of a header line followed by one
line of information per selected process, or possibly multiple ones if
using -H (one per lightweight-process). Other output styles can be
requested via --libxo.
By default, only the processes of the calling user, determined by
matching their effective user ID with that of the ps process, that have
controlling terminals are shown. A different set of processes can be
selected for display by using combinations of the -A, -a, -D, -G, -J, -p,
-T, -t, -U, -X, and -x options. Except for options -X and -x, as soon as
one of them appears, it inhibits the default process selection, i.e., the
calling user's processes are shown only on request. If more than one of
these (with same exceptions) appear, ps will select processes as soon as
they are matched by at least one of them (inclusive OR). The -X option
can be independently used to further filter the listed processes to only
those that have a controlling terminal (except for those selected by -p).
Its opposite, -x, forcefully removes that filter. If none of -X and -x
is specified, the implied default behavior is that of -X unless using
another option whose description explicitly says that -x is implied.
For each selected process, the default displayed information consists of
the process' ID, controlling terminal, state, CPU time (including both
user and system time) and associated command (see the documentation for
the command keyword below). This information can be tweaked using two
groups of options which can be combined as needed. First, options -o and
-O add columns with data corresponding to the explicitly passed keywords.
Available keywords are documented in the KEYWORDS section below. They
can be listed using option -L. Second, options -j, -l, -u, and -v
designate specific predefined groups of columns, also called canned
displays. Appearance of any of these options inhibits the default
display, replacing it all with the requested columns, and in the order
options are passed. The individual columns requested via a canned
display option that have the same keyword or an alias to that of some
column added by an earlier canned display option, or by an explicit -O or
-o option anywhere on the command line, are suppressed. This automatic
removal of duplicate data in canned displays is useful for slightly
tweaking these displays and/or combining multiple ones without having to
rebuild variants from scratch, e.g., using only -o options.
Output information lines are by default sorted first by controlling
terminal, then by process ID, and then, if -H has been specified, by
lightweight-process (thread) 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.
If the traditional text output (the default) is used, the default output
width is that requested by the COLUMNS environment variable if present,
else the line width of the terminal associated to the ps process, if any.
In all other situations, the output width is unlimited. See also the -w
option and the BUGS section.
For backwards compatibility, ps attempts to interpret any positional
argument as a process ID, as if specified by the -p option. Failure to
do so will trigger an error. ps also accepts the old-style BSD options,
whose format and effect are left undocumented on purpose.
The options are as follows:
--libxo
Generate output via libxo(3) in a selection of different human
and machine readable formats. See xo_options(7) for details on
command line arguments. The default is the traditional text
style output.
-A Display information about all processes in the system. Using
this option is strictly equivalent to specifying both -a and -x.
Please see their description for more information.
-a Display information about all users' processes. It does not,
however, list all processes (see -A and -x). If the
security.bsd.see_other_uids sysctl is set to zero, this option is
honored only if the real user ID of the ps process is 0.
-C Change the way the CPU percentage is calculated by using a "raw"
CPU calculation that ignores "resident" time (this normally has
no effect).
-c Change the "command" column output to just contain the executable
name, rather than the full command line.
-D Expand the list of selected processes based on the process tree.
"UP" will add the ancestor processes, "DOWN" will add the
descendant processes, and "BOTH" will add both the ancestor and
the descendant processes. -D does not imply -d, but works well
with it.
-d Arrange processes into descendancy order and prefix each command
with indentation text showing sibling and parent/child
relationships as a tree. If either of the -m and -r options are
also used, they control how sibling processes are sorted relative
to each other. Note that this option has no effect if the last
column does not have comm, command or ucomm as its keyword.
-e Display the environment as well.
-f Indicates to print the full command and arguments in command
columns. This is the default behavior on FreeBSD. See -c to
turn it off.
-G Display information about processes whose real group ID matches
the specified group IDs or names. Implies -x by default.
-H Show all of the threads associated with each process.
-h Repeat the information header as often as necessary to guarantee
one header per page of information.
-J Display information about processes which match the specified
jail IDs. This may be either the jid or name of the jail. Use
-J 0 to request display of host processes. Implies -x by
default.
-j Print information associated with the following keywords: user,
pid, ppid, pgid, sid, jobc, state, tt, time, and command.
-L List the set of keywords available for the -O and -o options.
-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 Save passed columns in a separate list that in the end is grafted
just after the display's first occurrence of the process ID
column as specified by other options, or the default display if
there is none. If the display prepared by other options does not
include a process ID column, the list is inserted at start of the
display. Further occurrences of -O append to the to-be-grafted
list of columns. This option takes a space- or comma-separated
list of keywords. The last keyword in the list may be appended
with an equals sign (`=') as explained for option -o and with the
same effect.
-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. Processes selected by this option are not subject
to being filtered by -X.
-r Sort by current CPU usage, instead of the combination of
controlling terminal and process ID.
-S Change the way the process times, namely cputime, systime, and
usertime, are calculated by summing all exited children to their
parent process.
-T Display information about processes attached to the device
associated with the standard input.
-t Display information about processes attached to the specified
terminal devices. Full pathnames, as well as abbreviations (see
explanation of the tt keyword) can be specified. Implies -x by
default.
-U Display information about processes whose real user ID matches
the specified user IDs or names. Implies -x by default.
-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
command. The -v option implies the -m option.
-w Use at least 131 columns to display information. If -w is
specified more than once, ps will use as many columns as
necessary. Please see the preamble of this manual page for how
the output width is initially determined. In particular, if the
initial output width is unlimited, specifying -w has no effect.
Please also consult the BUGS section.
-X When displaying processes selected by other options, skip any
processes which do not have a controlling terminal, except for
those selected through -p. This is the default behaviour, unless
using another option whose description explicitly says that -x is
implied.
-x When displaying processes selected by other options, include
processes which do not have a controlling terminal. This option
has the opposite behavior to that of -X. If both -X and -x are
specified, ps will obey the last occurrence.
-Z Add mac(4) label to the list of keywords for which ps will
display information.
KEYWORDS
The following is a complete list of the available keywords and their
meanings. Several of them have aliases (keywords which are synonyms).
Detailed descriptions for some of them can be found after this list.
%cpu percentage CPU usage (alias pcpu)
%mem percentage memory usage (alias pmem)
acflag accounting flag (alias acflg)
args command and arguments
class login class
comm command
command command and arguments
cow number of copy-on-write faults
cpu The processor number on which the process is executing
(visible only on SMP systems).
dsiz data size in KiB
emul system-call emulation environment (ABI)
etime elapsed running time, format "[days-][hours:]minutes:seconds"
etimes elapsed running time, in decimal integer seconds
fib default FIB number, see setfib(1)
flags the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias f)
flags2 the additional set of process flags, in hexadecimal (alias f2)
gid effective group ID (alias egid)
group group name (from egid) (alias egroup)
inblk total blocks read (alias inblock)
jail jail name
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
lwp thread (light-weight process) ID (alias tid)
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
nlwp number of threads (light-weight processes) tied to a process
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 process pointer
pagein pageins (same as majflt)
pgid process group number
pid process ID
ppid parent process ID
pri scheduling priority
re core residency time (in seconds; 127 = infinity)
rgid real group ID
rgroup group name (from rgid)
rss resident set size in KiB
rtprio realtime priority (see rtprio(1))
ruid real user ID
ruser user name (from ruid)
sid session ID
sig pending signals (alias pending)
sigcatch caught signals (alias caught)
sigignore ignored signals (alias ignored)
sigmask blocked signals (alias blocked)
sl sleep time (in seconds; 127 = infinity)
ssiz stack size in KiB
start time started
state symbolic process state (alias stat)
svgid saved gid from a setgid executable
svuid saved UID from a setuid executable
systime accumulated system CPU time
tdaddr thread address
tdname thread name
tdev control terminal device number
time accumulated CPU time, user + system (alias cputime)
tpgid control terminal process group ID
tracer tracer process ID
tsid control terminal session ID
tsiz text size in KiB
tt control terminal name (two letter abbreviation)
tty full name of control terminal
ucomm process name used for accounting
uid effective user ID (alias euid)
upr scheduling priority on return from system call (alias usrpri)
uprocp process pointer
user user name (from UID)
usertime accumulated user CPU time
vmaddr vmspace pointer
vsz virtual size in KiB (alias vsize)
wchan wait channel (as a symbolic name)
xstat exit or stop status (valid only for stopped or zombie process)
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.
class Login class associated with the process.
command The printed command and arguments are determined as follows. A
process that has exited and has a parent that has not yet
waited for the process (in other words, a zombie) is listed as
"<defunct>." If the arguments cannot be located (usually
because they have not been set, as is the case for 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 examining
memory or the swap area. The method is inherently somewhat
unreliable and in any event a process is entitled to destroy
this information. The ucomm keyword (accounting) 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.
flags The flags associated with the process as in the include file
<sys/proc.h>:
P_ADVLOCK 0x00000001 Process may hold a POSIX
advisory lock
P_CONTROLT 0x00000002 Has a controlling terminal
P_KPROC 0x00000004 Kernel process
P_PPWAIT 0x00000010 Parent is waiting for child
to exec/exit
P_PROFIL 0x00000020 Has started profiling
P_STOPPROF 0x00000040 Has thread in requesting to
stop prof
P_HADTHREADS 0x00000080 Has had threads (no cleanup
shortcuts)
P_SUGID 0x00000100 Had set id privileges since
last exec
P_SYSTEM 0x00000200 System proc: no sigs, stats
or swapping
P_SINGLE_EXIT 0x00000400 Threads suspending should
exit, not wait
P_TRACED 0x00000800 Debugged process being
traced
P_WAITED 0x00001000 Someone is waiting for us
P_WEXIT 0x00002000 Working on exiting
P_EXEC 0x00004000 Process called exec
P_WKILLED 0x00008000 Killed, shall go to
kernel/user boundary ASAP
P_CONTINUED 0x00010000 Proc has continued from a
stopped state
P_STOPPED_SIG 0x00020000 Stopped due to
SIGSTOP/SIGTSTP
P_STOPPED_TRACE 0x00040000 Stopped because of tracing
P_STOPPED_SINGLE 0x00080000 Only one thread can continue
P_PROTECTED 0x00100000 Do not kill on memory
overcommit
P_SIGEVENT 0x00200000 Process pending signals
changed
P_SINGLE_BOUNDARY 0x00400000 Threads should suspend at
user boundary
P_HWPMC 0x00800000 Process is using HWPMCs
P_JAILED 0x01000000 Process is in jail
P_TOTAL_STOP 0x02000000 Stopped for system suspend
P_INEXEC 0x04000000 Process is in execve(2)
P_STATCHILD 0x08000000 Child process stopped or
exited
P_INMEM 0x10000000 Always set, unused
P_PPTRACE 0x80000000 Vforked child issued
ptrace(PT_TRACEME)
flags2 The flags kept in p_flag2 associated with the process as in the
include file <sys/proc.h>:
P2_INHERIT_PROTECTED 0x00000001 New children get
P_PROTECTED
P2_NOTRACE 0x00000002 No ptrace(2) attach or
coredumps
P2_NOTRACE_EXEC 0x00000004 Keep P2_NOPTRACE on
execve(2)
P2_AST_SU 0x00000008 Handles SU ast for
kthreads
P2_PTRACE_FSTP 0x00000010 SIGSTOP from PT_ATTACH
not yet handled
P2_TRAPCAP 0x00000020 SIGTRAP on ENOTCAPABLE
P2_ASLR_ENABLE 0x00000040 Force enable ASLR
P2_ASLR_DISABLE 0x00000080 Force disable ASLR
P2_ASLR_IGNSTART 0x00000100 Enable ASLR to consume
sbrk area
P2_PROTMAX_ENABLE 0x00000200 Force enable implied
PROT_MAX
P2_PROTMAX_DISABLE 0x00000400 Force disable implied
PROT_MAX
P2_STKGAP_DISABLE 0x00000800 Disable stack gap for
MAP_STACK
P2_STKGAP_DISABLE_EXEC 0x00001000 Stack gap disabled after
exec
P2_ITSTOPPED 0x00002000 itimers stopped (as part
of process stop)
P2_PTRACEREQ 0x00004000 Active ptrace req
P2_NO_NEW_PRIVS 0x00008000 Ignore setuid on exec
P2_WXORX_DISABLE 0x00010000 WX mappings enabled
P2_WXORX_ENABLE_EXEC 0x00020000 WxorX enabled after exec
P2_WEXIT 0x00040000 Internal exit early state
P2_REAPKILLED 0x00080000 REAP_KILL pass handled
the process
P2_MEMBAR_PRIVE 0x00100000 membarrier private
expedited registered
P2_MEMBAR_PRIVE_SYNCORE 0x00200000 membarrier private
expedited sync core
registered
P2_MEMBAR_GLOBE 0x00400000 membar global expedited
registered
label The MAC label of the process.
lim The soft limit on memory used, specified via a call to
setrlimit(2).
lstart The exact time the command started, using the `%c' format
described in strftime(3).
lockname The name of the lock that the process is currently blocked on.
If the name is invalid or unknown, then "???" is displayed.
logname The login name associated with the session the process is in
(see getlogin(2)).
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 KiB.
start The time the command started. If the command started less than
24 hours ago, the start time is displayed using the "%H:%M"
format described in strftime(3). If the command started less
than 7 days ago, the start time is displayed using the "%a%H"
format. Otherwise, the start time is displayed using the
"%e%b%y" format.
sig The bitmask of signals pending in the process queue if the -H
option has not been specified, else the per-thread queue of
pending signals.
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,
uninterruptible) 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.
C The process is in capsicum(4) capability mode.
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' parent is suspended during a vfork(2),
waiting for the process to exec or exit.
X The process is being traced or debugged.
tt An abbreviation for the pathname of the controlling terminal,
if any. The abbreviation consists of the three letters
following /dev/tty, or, for pseudo-terminals, the corresponding
entry in /dev/pts. This is followed by a `-' if the process
can no longer reach that controlling terminal (i.e., it has
been revoked). A `-' without a preceding two letter
abbreviation or pseudo-terminal device number indicates a
process which never had a controlling terminal. The full
pathname of the controlling terminal is available via the tty
keyword.
wchan The event (an address in the system) on which a process waits.
When printed numerically, the initial part of the address is
trimmed off and the result is printed in hex, for example,
0x80324000 prints as 324000.
ENVIRONMENT
The following environment variables affect the execution of ps:
COLUMNS If set, specifies the user's preferred output width in column
positions. Only affects the traditional text style output.
Please see the preamble of this manual page on how the final
output width is determined.
FILES
/boot/kernel/kernel default system namelist
EXIT STATUS
The ps utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
EXAMPLES
Display information on all system processes:
$ ps -auxw
SEE ALSO
kill(1), pgrep(1), pkill(1), procstat(1), w(1), kvm(3), libxo(3),
strftime(3), xo_options(7), mac(4), procfs(4), 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 1003.1-2024 ("POSIX.1")
and what is supported on non-BSD operating systems.
In particular, and contrary to this implementation, POSIX specifies that
option -d should serve to select all processes except session leaders,
option -e to select all processes (equivalently to -A), and option -u to
select processes by effective user ID.
However, options -A, -a, -G, -l, -o, -p, -U, and -t behave as prescribed
by IEEE Std 1003.1-2024 ("POSIX.1"). Options -f and -w currently do not,
but may be changed to in the future.
POSIX's option -g, to select processes having the specified processes as
their session leader, is not implemented. However, other UNIX systems
that provide this functionality do so via option -s instead, reserving -g
to query by group leaders.
HISTORY
The ps command appeared in Version 3 AT&T UNIX in section 8 of the
manual.
BUGS
Since ps cannot run faster than the system and is run as any other
scheduled process, the information it displays can never be exact.
ps currently does not correctly limit the output width, and in most cases
does not limit it at all when it should. Regardless of the target width,
requested columns are always all printed and with widths allowing to
entirely print their longest values, except for columns with keyword
command or args that are not last in the display (they are truncated to
16 bytes), and for the last column in the display if its keyword requests
textual information of variable length, such as the command, jail, and
user keywords do. This considerably limits the effects and usefulness of
the terminal width on the output, and consequently that of the COLUMNS
environment variable and the -w option (if specified only once).
The ps utility does not correctly display argument lists containing
multibyte characters.
FreeBSD 15.1-STABLE-HBSD July 16, 2025 PS(1)