Bsd ps
From wikinotes
The BSD variation of the ps
commandline utility.
Displays information about processes.
Usage
ps -aux # print all processes # all processes, sorted by memory usage (RSS) ps -o pid,%cpu,%mem,rss,args -ax \ | sort -rk3 \ | less -S # top 20 memory usage, every 3s while true; do ps -ax -o pid,jid,%cpu,%mem,rss,vsz,args \ | sort -r -k4 \ | head -n20 sleep 3 done
Common Flags
# What to show -a # display other users' processes -x # include non-toplevel processes -d # show process trees # Set Columns ps -L # list avail columns -o pid,%cpu,%mem,args # set display columns # Sorting -m # sort by memory usage # Presets (sorting/columns) -u # sort by cpu, general info -v # sort by mem, print memory relatedUseful display columns
args # command + arguments used to start process %cpu # percentage of cpu use %mem # percentage of memory use rss # (resident-set-size kb) memory used by a process (excludes swap) vsz # (virtual-set-size kb) memory reserved/available for a process (includes swap, allocated+unused, etc) user # user running process