Linux ps command - 20 Real Life Examples

The ps command, short for Process Status, is a command line utility that is used to display or view information related to the processes running in a Linux system. As we all know, Linux is a multitasking and multiprocessing system. Therefore, multiple processes can run concurrently without affecting each other. The ps command lists current running processes alongside their PIDs and other attributes. In this guide, we are going to focus on ps command usage. It retrieves information about the processes from virtual files which are located in the /proc file system

ps command without arguments

The ps command without arguments lists the running processes in the current shell

ps

Output The output consists of four columns PID - This is the unique process ID TTY - This is the typeof terminal that the user is logged in to TIME - This is the time in minutes and seconds that the process has been running CMD - The command that launched the process

Viewing all the running processes in different formats

To have a glance at all the running processes, execute the command below ps -A Output or ps -e Output

View processes associated with the terminal

To view processes associated with the terminal run ps -T Output

View processes not associated with terminal

To view all processes with the exception of processes associated with the terminal and session leaders execute ps -a A session leader is a process that starts other processes Output

Show all current running processes

To view all current processes execute

ps -ax

Output -a flag stands for all processes -xwill display all processes even those not associated with the current tty

Display all processes in BSD format

If you wish to display processes in BSD format, execute

ps au 

OR

ps aux

Output

To perform full format listing

To view a full format listing run

ps -ef 

OR

ps -eF

Output

Filter processes according to the user

If you wish to list processes associated with a specific user, use the -u flag as shown

ps -u user

For example

ps -u jamie

Output

Filter process by thread process

If you wish to know the thread of a particular process, make use of the -Lflag followed by the PID For example

ps -L 4264

Output

Show every process running as root

Sometimes, you may want to reveal all processes run by the root user. To achieve this run

ps -U root -u root

Output

Display group processes

If you wish to list all processes associated by a certain group run

ps -fG group_name

Or

ps -fG groupID

For example

ps -fG root

Output

Search Process PID

Chances are that usually don’t know the PID to a process. You can search the PID of a process by running

ps -C process_name

For example

ps -C bash

Output

Listing processes by PID

You can display processes by their PID as shown

ps -fp PID

For example

ps -fp 1294

Output

To display process hierarchy in a tree diagram

Usually, most processes are forked from parent processes. Getting to know this parent-child relationship can come in handy. The command below searches for processes going by the name apache2

ps -f --forest -C bash

Output

Display child processes of a parent process

For example, If you wish to display all forked processes belonging to apache, execute

ps -o pid,uname,comm -C bash

Output The first process, which is owned by root is the main apache2 process and the rest of the processes have been forked from this main process To display all the child apache2 processes using the pid of the main apache2 process execute

ps --ppid PID no.

For example

ps --ppid 1294

Output

Display process threads

The ps command can be used to view threads along with the processes. The command below displays all the threads owned by the process with PID pid_no

ps -p pid_no -L

For example

ps -p 1294 -L 

Output

Display a selected list of columns

You can use the ps command to display only the columns you need. For example ,

ps -e -o pid,uname,pcpu,pmem,comm

The command above will only display the PID, Username, CPU, memory and command columns Output

Renaming column labels

To rename column labels execute the command below

 ps -e -o pid=PID,uname=USERNAME,pcpu=CPU_USAGE,pmem=%MEM,comm=COMMAND

Output

Display elapsed time of processes

Elapsed time refers to how long the process has been running for

ps -e -o pid,comm,etime

Output The -o option enables the column for elapsed time

Using ps command with grep

the ps command can be used with grep command to search for a particular process For example

ps -ef  | grep systemd

Output