| ps | [ -AaCcdehjlmrSsTuvwx]
      [-kkey]
      [-Mcore]
      [-Nsystem]
      [-Ofmt]
      [-ofmt]
      [-ppid]
      [-ttty]
      [-Uuser]
      [-Wswap] | 
ps displays a header line followed by lines containing
  information about running processes. By default, the display includes only
  processes that have controlling terminals and are owned by your uid. The
  default sort order of controlling terminal and (among processes with the same
  controlling terminal) process ID may be changed using the
  -k, -m, or
  -r options.
The information displayed for each process is selected based on a
    set of keywords (see the -L,
    -O, and -o options). The
    default output format includes, for each process, the process' ID,
    controlling terminal, CPU time (including both user and system time), state,
    and associated command.
The options are as follows:
  - -A
- Display information about all processes. This is equivalent to
      -a-x.
- -a
- Display information about other users' processes as well as your own. Note
      that this does not display information about processes without controlling
      terminals.
- -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
- Do not display full command with arguments, but only the executable name.
      This may be somewhat confusing; for example, all
      sh(1) scripts will show as
      “sh”.
- -d
- Arrange processes into descendancy order and prefix each command with
      indentation text showing sibling and parent/child relationships. If either
      of the -mand-roptions
      are also used, they control how sibling processes are sorted relative to
      each other.
- -e
- Display the environment as well. The environment for other users'
      processes can only be displayed by the super-user.
- -h
- Repeat the information header as often as necessary to guarantee one
      header per page of information.
- -j
- Print information associated with the following keywords:
      user, pid,
      ppid, pgid,
      sess, jobc,
      state, tt,
      time, and command.
- -kkey
- Sort the output using the space or comma separated list of keywords.
      Multiple sort keys may be specified, using any of the
      -k,-m, or-roptions. The default sort order is equivalent
      to-ktdev,pid.
- -L
- List the set of available keywords.
- -l
- Display information associated with the following keywords:
      uid, pid,
      ppid, cpu,
      pri, nice,
      vsz, rss,
      wchan, state,
      tt, time, and
      command.
- -Mcore
- Extract values from the specified core file instead of the running
    system.
- -m
- Sort by memory usage. This is equivalent to -kvsz.
- -Nsystem
- Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the default,
      “/netbsd”. Ignored unless
      -Mis specified.
- -Ofmt
- Display information associated with the space or comma separated list of
      keywords specified. The -Ooption does not
      suppress the default display; it inserts additional keywords just after
      the pid keyword in the default display, or after the
      pid keyword (if any) in a non-default display
      specified before the first use of the-Oflag.
      Keywords inserted by multiple-Ooptions will be
      adjacent.An equals sign (“=”) followed by a customised
        header string may be appended to a keyword, as described in more detail
        under the -ooption.
 
- -ofmt
- Display information associated with the space or comma separated list of
      keywords specified. Use of the -ooption
      suppresses the set of keywords that would be displayed by default, or
      appends to the set of keywords specified by other options.An equals sign (“=”) followed by a customised
        header string may be appended to a keyword. This causes the printed
        header to use the specified string instead of the default header
        associated with the keyword. Everything after the first equals sign is part of the
        customised header text, and this may include embedded spaces (“
        ”), commas (“,”), or equals signs
        (“=”). To specify multiple keywords with customised
        headers, use multiple -oor-Ooptions.
 If all the keywords to be displayed have customised headers,
        and all the customised headers are entirely empty, then the header line
        is not printed at all. 
- -ppid
- Display information associated with the specified process ID.
- -r
- Sort by current CPU usage. This is equivalent to
      -k%cpu.
- -S
- Change the way the process time is calculated by summing all exited
      children to their parent process.
- -s
- Display one line for each LWP, rather than one line for each process, and
      display information associated with the following keywords:
      uid, pid,
      ppid, cpu,
      lid, nlwp,
      pri, nice,
      vsz, rss,
      wchan, lstate,
      tt, time, and
      command.
- -T
- Display information about processes attached to the device associated with
      the standard input.
- -ttty
- Display information about processes attached to the specified terminal
      device. Use a question mark (“?”) for processes not attached
      to a terminal device and a minus sign (“-”) for processes
      that have been revoked from their terminal device.
- -Uuser
- Display processes belonging to the specified user, given either as a user
      name or a uid.
- -u
- Display information associated with the following keywords:
      user, pid,
      %cpu, %mem,
      vsz, rss,
      tt, state,
      start, time, and
      command. The -uoption
      implies the-roption.
- -v
- Display information associated with the following keywords:
      pid, state,
      time, sl,
      re, pagein,
      vsz, rss,
      lim, tsiz,
      %cpu, %mem, and
      command. The -voption
      implies the-moption.
- -Wswap
- Extract swap information from the specified file instead of the default,
      “/dev/drum”. Ignored unless
      -Mis specified.
- -w
- Use 132 columns to display information instead of the default, which is
      your window size. If the -woption is specified
      more than once,pswill use as many columns as
      necessary without regard to your window size.
- -x
- Also display information about processes without controlling
    terminals.
A complete list of the available keywords are listed below. 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.
- flags
- The flags (in hexadecimal) associated with the process as in the include
      file <sys/proc.h>:
- 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).
- maxrss
- the maxiumum resident set size of the process (in 1024 byte units).
- nice
- The process scheduling increment (see
      setpriority(2)).
- rss
- the real memory (resident set) size of the process (in 1024 byte
    units).
- start
- The time the command started. If the command started less than 24 hours
      ago, the start time is displayed using the “%l:%M%p” format
      described in strftime(3).
      If the command started less than 7 days ago, the start time is displayed
      using the “%a%p” format. Otherwise, the start time is
      displayed using the “%e%b%y” format.
- state
- The state is given by a sequence of letters, for example,
      “RNs”. The first letter indicates the run state of the
      process:
    
    
      - D
- Marks a process in device or other short term, uninterruptible
        wait.
- I
- Marks a process that is idle (sleeping interruptibly for longer than
          about MAXSLP(default 20) seconds).
- O
- Marks a process running on a processor.
- R
- Marks a runnable process, or one that is in the process of
        creation.
- S
- Marks a process that is sleeping interruptibly for less than about
          MAXSLP(default 20) seconds.
- T
- Marks a stopped process.
- U
- Marks a suspended process.
- Z
- Marks a dead process that has exited, but not been waited for (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 LWP is detached (can't be waited for).
- <
- The process has raised CPU scheduling priority.
- a
- The process is using scheduler activations (deprecated).
- E
- The process is in the process of exiting.
- K
- The process is a kernel thread or system process.
- l
- The process has multiple LWPs.
- N
- The process is niced (has reduced CPU scheduling priority) (see
          setpriority(2)).
- s
- The process is a session leader.
- V
- The process is suspended during a
          vfork(2).
- 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 two letters following
      “/dev/tty” or, for the console,
      “co”. This is followed by a “-” if the process
      can no longer reach that controlling terminal (i.e., it has been
    revoked).
- 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.
When printing using the command keyword, 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⟩”, and a process which is blocked
    while trying to exit is listed as
  “⟨exiting⟩”.
ps will try to locate the processes'
    argument vector from the user area in order to print the command name and
    arguments. This method is not reliable because a process is allowed to
    destroy this information. The ucomm (accounting)
    keyword will always contain the real command name as contained in the
    process structure's p_comm field.
If the command vector cannot be located (usually because it has
    not been set, as is the case of system processes and/or kernel threads) the
    command name is printed within square brackets.
To indicate that the argument vector has been tampered with,
    ps will append the real command name to the output
    within parentheses if the basename of the first argument in the argument
    vector does not match the contents of the real command name.
In addition, ps checks for the following
    two situations and does not append the real command name parenthesized:
  - -shellname
- The login process traditionally adds a ‘-’ in front of the
      shell name to indicate a login shell. pswill not
      append parenthesized the command name if it matches with the name in the
      first argument of the argument vector, skipping the leading
      ‘-’.
- daemonname: current-activity
- Daemon processes frequently report their current activity by setting their
      name to be like “daemonname: current-activity”.
      pswill not append parenthesized the command name,
      if the string preceding the ‘:’ in the first argument of the
      argument vector matches the command name.
The following is a complete list of the available keywords and their meanings.
  Several of them have aliases (keywords which are synonyms).
  - %cpu
- percentage CPU usage (alias pcpu)
- %mem
- percentage memory usage (alias pmem)
- acflag
- accounting flag (alias acflg)
- comm
- command (the argv[0] value)
- command
- command and arguments (alias args)
- cpu
- short-term CPU usage factor (for scheduling)
- cpuid
- CPU number the current process or lwp is running on.
- ctime
- accumulated CPU time of all children that have exited
- egid
- effective group id
- egroup
- group name (from egid)
- emul
- emulation name
- etime
- elapsed time since the process was started, in the form
      [[dd-]hh:]mm:ss
- euid
- effective user id
- euser
- user name (from euid)
- flags
- the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias f)
- gid
- effective group id
- group
- group name (from gid)
- groupnames
- group names (from group access list)
- groups
- group access list
- idrss
- integral unshared data
- isrss
- integral unshared stack
- ixrss
- integral shared memory size
- inblk
- total blocks read (alias inblock)
- jobc
- job control count
- ktrace
- tracing flags
- ktracep
- tracing vnode
- laddr
- kernel virtual address of the struct lwp belonging
      to the LWP.
- lid
- ID of the LWP
- lim
- memory use limit
- lname
- descriptive name of the LWP
- logname
- login name of user who started the process (alias
      login)
- lstart
- time started
- lstate
- symbolic LWP state
- ltime
- CPU time of the LWP
- majflt
- total page faults
- maxrss
- maximum resident set size
- minflt
- total page reclaims
- msgrcv
- total messages received (reads from pipes/sockets)
- msgsnd
- total messages sent (writes on pipes/sockets)
- nice
- nice value (alias ni)
- nivcsw
- total involuntary context switches
- nlwp
- number of LWPs in the process
- nsigs
- total signals taken (alias nsignals)
- nvcsw
- total voluntary context switches
- nwchan
- wait channel (as an address)
- oublk
- total blocks written (alias oublock)
- p_ru
- resource usage pointer (valid only for zombie)
- paddr
- kernel virtual address of the struct proc belonging
      to the process.
- 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
- rlink
- reverse link on run queue, or 0
- rlwp
- number of LWPs on a processor or run queue
- rss
- resident set size
- rsz
- resident set size + (text size / text use count) (alias
      rssize)
- ruid
- real user ID
- ruser
- user name (from ruid)
- sess
- session pointer
- 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)
- start
- time started
- state
- symbolic process state (alias stat)
- stime
- accumulated system CPU time
- svgid
- saved gid from a setgid executable
- svgroup
- group name (from svgid)
- svuid
- saved uid from a setuid executable
- svuser
- user name (from svuid)
- tdev
- control terminal device number
- time
- accumulated CPU time, user + system (alias
    cputime)
- tpgid
- control terminal process group ID
- tsess
- control terminal session pointer
- tsiz
- text size (in Kbytes)
- tt
- control terminal name (two letter abbreviation)
- tty
- full name of control terminal
- uaddr
- kernel virtual address of the struct user belonging
      to the LWP.
- ucomm
- name to be used for accounting
- uid
- effective user ID
- upr
- scheduling priority on return from system call (alias
      usrpri)
- user
- user name (from uid)
- utime
- accumulated user CPU time
- vsz
- virtual size in Kbytes (alias vsize)
- wchan
- wait channel (as a symbolic name)
- xstat
- exit or stop status (valid only for stopped or zombie process)
  - /dev
- special files and device names
- /dev/drum
- default swap device
- /var/run/dev.cdb
- /dev name database
- /var/db/kvm.db
- system name list database
- /netbsd
- default system name list
Aps utility appeared in
  Version 3 AT&T UNIX in section 8 of the
  manual.
Since ps cannot run faster than the system and is run as
  any other scheduled process, the information it displays can never be exact.