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Managing System Information, Processes, and Performance in Oracle® Solaris 11.4

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Updated: August 2021
 
 

Using the ps Command

The ps command enables you to check the status of active processes on a system, and also display technical information about the processes. This data is useful for administrative tasks, such as determining how to set process priorities.

The ps command includes options to report the following information:

  • Command name and arguments
  • CPU time used
  • Current status of the process
  • Memory used
  • Parent process ID
  • Priority
  • Process ID
  • Scheduling class
  • User ID

The following list describes some fields that are reported by the ps command. The fields that are displayed depend on which option you choose. For a description of all available options, see the ps(1) man page.

C

The processor utilization for scheduling. This field is not displayed when the –c option is used.

CLS

The scheduling class to which the process belongs such as real-time, system, or timesharing. This field is included only with the –c option.

CMD

The command that generated the process.

FMRI

The SMF FMRI that corresponds to the contract ID for the process.

NI

The nice number of the process, which contributes to its scheduling priority. Making a process "nicer" means lowering its priority.

PID

The process ID.

PPID

The parent process ID.

PRI

The scheduling priority of the kernel thread. Higher numbers indicate a higher priority.

STIME

The starting time of the process in hours, minutes, and seconds.

SZ

The virtual address size of the process.

TIME

The total amount of CPU time used by the process since it began.

TTY

The terminal from which the process, or its parent, was started. A question mark indicates that there is no controlling terminal.

UID

The effective user ID of the owner of the process.

ZONE

The zone in which the process is running.