pwdx(1)

Name | Synopsis | Description | Options | Usage | Exit Status | Files | Attributes | See Also | Warnings

Name

proc, pflags, pcred, pldd, psig, pstack, pfiles, pwdx, pstop, prun, pwait, ptime– proc tools

Synopsis

/usr/bin/pflags [-r] pid | core [/lwp] ...

/usr/bin/pcred [pid | core]...

/usr/bin/pcred [-u user/uid] [-g group/gid] [-G grouplist] pid...

/usr/bin/pcred -l login pid...

/usr/bin/pldd [-Fl] [pid | core]...

/usr/bin/psig [-n] pid...

/usr/bin/pstack [-F] pid | core [/lwp] ...

/usr/bin/pfiles [-Fn] pid...

/usr/bin/pwdx pid...

/usr/bin/pstop pid[/lwp] ...

/usr/bin/prun pid[/lwp] ...

/usr/bin/pwait [-v] pid...

/usr/bin/ptime [-Fm] [-p] pid...

/usr/bin/ptime [-m]command [arg]...

Description

The proc tools are utilities that exercise features of /proc (see proc(4)). Most of them take a list of process-ids (pid). The tools that do take process-ids also accept /proc/nnn as a process-id, so the shell expansion /proc/* can be used to specify all processes in the system.

Some of the proc tools can also be applied to core files (see core(4)). The tools that apply to core files accept a list of either process IDs or names of core files or both.

Some of the proc tools can operate on individual threads. Users can examine only selected threads by appending /thread-id to the process-id or core. Multiple threads can be selected using the - and , delimiters. For example /1,2,7-9 examines threads 1, 2, 7, 8, and 9.

See WARNINGS.

pflags

Print the /proc tracing flags, the pending and held signals, and other /proc status information for each process or specified lwps in each process.

pcred

Print or set the credentials (effective, real, saved UIDs and GIDs) of each process.

pldd

List the dynamic libraries linked into each process, including shared objects explicitly attached using dlopen(3C). See also ldd(1).

psig

List the signal actions and handlers of each process. See signal.h(3HEAD).

pstack

Print a hex+symbolic stack trace for each process or specified lwps in each process.

pfiles

Report fstat(2) and fcntl(2) information for all open files in each process. For network endpoints, the local (and peer if connected) address information is also provided. For sockets, the socket type, socket options and send and receive buffer sizes are also provided. In addition, a path to the file is reported if the information is available from /proc/pid/path. This is not necessarily the same name used to open the file. See proc(4) for more information.

pwdx

Print the current working directory of each process.

pstop

Stop each process or the specified lwps (PR_REQUESTED stop).

prun

Set running each process or the specified lwps (the inverse of pstop).

pwait

Wait for all of the specified processes to terminate.

ptime

Time the command, like time(1), but using microstate accounting for reproducible precision. Unlike time(1), children of the command are not timed.

If the -p pid version is used, display a snapshot of timing statistics for the specified pid.

Options

The following general options are supported:

-F

Force. Grabs the target process even if another process has control.

-n

(psig and pfiles only) Sets non-verbose mode. psig displays signal handler addresses rather than names. pfiles does not display verbose information for each file descriptor. Instead, pfiles limits its output to the information that would be retrieved if the process applied fstat(2) to each of its file descriptors.

-r

(pflags only) If the process is stopped, displays its machine registers.

-v

(pwait only) Verbose. Reports terminations to standard output.

In addition to the general options, pcred supports the following options:

-g group/gid

Sets the real, effective, and saved group ids (GIDs) of the target processes to the specified value.

-G grouplist

Sets the supplementary GIDs of the target process to the specified list of groups. The supplementary groups should be specified as a comma-separated list of group names ids. An empty list clears the supplementary group list of the target processes.

-l login

Sets the real, effective, and saved UIDs of the target processes to the UID of the specified login. Sets the real, effective, and saved GIDs of the target processes to the GID of the specified login. Sets the supplementary group list to the supplementary groups list of the specified login.

-u user/uid

Sets the real, effective, and saved user ids (UIDs) of the target processes to the specified value.

In addition to the general options, pldd supports the following option:

-l

Shows unresolved dynamic linker map names.

In addition to the general options, ptime supports the following options:

-m

Display the full set of microstate accounting statistics.

The displayed fields are as follows:

real

Wall clock time.

user

User level CPU time.

sys

System call CPU time.

trap

Other system trap CPU time.

tflt

Text page fault sleep time.

dflt

Data page fault sleep time.

kflt

Kernel page fault sleep time.

lock

User lock wait sleep time.

slp

All other sleep time.

lat

CPU latency (wait) time.

stop

Stopped time.

-p pid

Displays a snapshot of timing statistics for the specified pid.

To set the credentials of another process, a process must have sufficient privilege to change its user and group ids to those specified according to the rules laid out in setuid(2) and it must have sufficient privilege to control the target process.

Usage

These proc tools stop their target processes while inspecting them and reporting the results: pfiles, pldd, and pstack. A process can do nothing while it is stopped. Thus, for example, if the X server is inspected by one of these proc tools running in a window under the X server's control, the whole window system can become deadlocked because the proc tool would be attempting to print its results to a window that cannot be refreshed. Logging in from from another system using rlogin(1) and killing the offending proc tool would clear up the deadlock in this case.

See WARNINGS.

Caution should be exercised when using the -F flag. Imposing two controlling processes on one victim process can lead to chaos. Safety is assured only if the primary controlling process, typically a debugger, has stopped the victim process and the primary controlling process is doing nothing at the moment of application of the proc tool in question.

Some of the proc tools can also be applied to core files, as shown by the synopsis above. A core file is a snapshot of a process's state and is produced by the kernel prior to terminating a process with a signal or by the gcore(1) utility. Some of the proc tools can need to derive the name of the executable corresponding to the process which dumped core or the names of shared libraries associated with the process. These files are needed, for example, to provide symbol table information for pstack(1). If the proc tool in question is unable to locate the needed executable or shared library, some symbol information is unavailable for display. Similarly, if a core file from one operating system release is examined on a different operating system release, the run-time link-editor debugging interface (librtld_db) cannot be able to initialize. In this case, symbol information for shared libraries is not available.

Exit Status

The following exit values are returned:

0

Successful operation.

non-zero

An error has occurred.

Files

/proc/*

process files

Attributes

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE	ATTRIBUTE VALUE
Availability	SUNWesu
Interface Stability	See below.

The human readable output is Uncommitted. The options are Committed.

See Also

gcore(1), ldd(1), pargs(1), pgrep(1), pkill(1), plimit(1), pmap(1), preap(1), ps(1), ptree(1), ppgsz(1), pwd(1), rlogin(1), time(1), truss(1), wait(1), fcntl(2), fstat(2), setuid(2), dlopen(3C), signal.h(3HEAD), core(4), proc(4), process(4), attributes(5), zones(5)

Warnings

The following proc tools stop their target processes while inspecting them and reporting the results: pfiles, pldd, and pstack. However, even if pstack operates on an individual thread, it stops the whole process.

A process or thread can do nothing while it is stopped. Stopping a heavily used process or thread in a production environment, even for a short amount of time, can cause severe bottlenecks and even hangs of these processes or threads, causing them to be unavailable to users. Some databases could also terminate abnormally. Thus, for example, a database server under heavy load could hang when one of the database processes or threads is traced using the above mentioned proc tools. Because of this, stopping a UNIX process or thread in a production environment should be avoided.

A process or thread being stopped by these tools can be identified by issuing /usr/bin/ps -eflL and looking for “T” in the first column. Notice that certain processes, for example “sched”, can show the “T” status by default most of the time.

The process ID returned for locked files on network file systems might not be meaningful.

SunOS 5.11  Last Revised 10 Dec 2008

Name | Synopsis | Description | Options | Usage | Exit Status | Files | Attributes | See Also | Warnings