Important 10 Linux ps command Practical Examples

As an Operating System which inspired from Unix, Linux has a built-in tool to capture current processes on the system. This tool is available in command line interface.

What is PS Command

From its manual page, PS gives a snapshots of the current process. It will “capture” the system condition at a single time. If you want to have a repetitive updates in a real time, we can use top command.

PS support three (3) type of usage syntax style.

1. UNIX style, which may be grouped and must be preceded by a dash
2. BSD style, which may be grouped and must not be used with a dash
3. GNU long options, which are preceded by two dash

We can mix those style, but conflicts can appear. In this article, will use UNIX style. Here’s are some examples of PS command in a daily use.

1. Run ps without any options

This is a very basic ps usage. Just type ps on your console to see its result.

By default, it will show us 4 columns of information.

• PID is a Process ID of the running command (CMD)
• TTY is a place where the running command runs
• TIME tell about how much time is used by CPU while running the command
• CMD is a command that run as current process

This information is displayed in unsorted result.

2. Show all current processes

To do this, we can use -a options. As we can guess, -a is stand for “all”. While x will show all process even the current process is not associated with any TTY (terminal)

$ ps -ax

This result might be long result. To make it more easier to read, combine it with less command.

$ ps -ax | less

3. Filter processes by its user

For some situation we may want to filter processes by user. To do this, we can use -u option. Let say we want to see what processes which run by user pungki. So the command will be like below

$ ps -u pungki

4. Filter processes by CPU or memory usage

Another thing that you might want to see is filter the result by CPU or memory usage. With this, you can grab information about which processes that consume your resource. To do this, we can use aux options. Here’s an example of it :

$ ps -aux | less

Since the result can be in a long list, we can pipe less command into ps command.
By default, the result will be in unsorted form. If we want to sort by particular column, we can add –sortoption into ps command.

Sort by the highest CPU utilization in ascending order

$ ps -aux –sort -pcpu | less

Sort by the highest Memory utilization in ascending order

$ ps -aux –sort -pmem | less

Or we can combine itu a single command and display only the top ten of the result :

$ ps -aux –sort -pcpu,+pmem | head -n 10

5. Filter processes by its name or process ID

To to this, we can use -C option followed by the keyword. Let say, we want to show processes named getty. We can type :

$ ps -C getty

If we want to show more detail about the result, we can add -f option to show it on full format listing. The above command will looks like below :

$ ps -f -C getty

6. Filter processes by thread of process

If we need to know the thread of a particular process, we can use -L option followed by its Process ID (PID). Here’s an example of -L option in action :

$ ps -L 1213

As we can see, the PID remain the same value, but the LWP which shows numbers of thread show different values.

7. Show processes in hierarchy

Sometime we want to see the processes in hierarchical form. To do this, we can use -axjf options.

$ps -axjf

Or, another command which we can use is pstree.

$ pstree

8. Show security information

If we want to see who is currently logged on into your server, we can see it using the ps command. There are some options that we can use to fulfill our needs. Here’s some examples :

$ ps -eo pid,user,args

Option -e will show you all processes while -o option will control the output. Pid, User and Args will show you the Process ID, the User who run the application and the running application.

The keyword / user-defined format that can be used with -e option are args, cmd, comm, command, fname, ucmd, ucomm, lstart, bsdstart and start.

9. Show every process running as root (real & effecitve ID) in user format

System admin may want to see what processes are being run by root and other information related to it. Using ps command, we can do by this simple command :

$ ps -U root -u root u

The -U parameter will select by real user ID (RUID). It selects the processes whose real user name or ID is in the userlist list. The real User ID identifies the user who created the process.

While the -u paramater will select by effective user ID (EUID)

The last u paramater, will display the output in user-oriented format which contains User, PID, %CPU, %MEM, VSZ, RSS, TTY, STAT, START, TIME and COMMAND columns.

Here’s the output of the above command.

10. Use PS in a realtime process viewer

ps will display a report of what happens in your system. The result will be a static report.
Let say, we want to filter processes by CPU and Memory usage as on the point 4 above. And we want the report is updated every 1 second. We can do it by combining ps command with watch command on Linux.

Here’s the command :

$ watch -n 1 ‘ps -aux –sort -pmem, -pcpu’

If you feel the report is too long, we can limit it by – let say – the top 20 processes. We can add headcommand to do it.

$ watch -n 1 ‘ps -aux –sort -pmem, -pcpu | head 20’

This live reporter is not like top or htop of course. But the advantage of using ps to make live report is that you can custom the field. You can choose which field you want to see.

For example, if you need only the pungki user shown, then you can change the command to become like this :

$ watch -n 1 ‘ps -aux -U pungki u –sort -pmem, -pcpu | head 20’

Conclusion

You may use ps on your daily usage to monitor about what happens your Linux system. But actually, you can generate various types of report using ps command with the use of appropriate paramaters.

Another ps advantage is that ps are installed by default in any kind of Linux. So you can just start to use it.

Don’t forget to see ps documentation by typing man ps on you Linux console to explore more options.

10 ‘free’ Commands to Check Memory Usage in Linux

Linux is one of the most popular open source operating system and comes with huge set of commands. The most important and single way of determining the total available space of the physical memory and swap memory is by using “free” command.

The Linux “free” command gives information about total used and available space of physical memory andswap memory with buffers used by kernel in Linux/Unix like operating systems.

 

This article provides some useful examples of “free” commands with options, that might be useful for you to better utilize memory that you have.

1. Display System Memory

Free command used to check the used and available space of physical memory and swap memory in KB. See the command in action below.

# free

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1021628     912548     109080          0     120368     655548
-/+ buffers/cache:     136632     884996
Swap:      4194296          0    4194296

2. Display Memory in Bytes

Free command with option -b, display the size of memory in Bytes.

# free -b

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:    1046147072  934420480  111726592          0  123256832  671281152
-/+ buffers/cache:  139882496  906264576
Swap:   4294959104          0 4294959104

3. Display Memory in Kilo Bytes

Free command with option -k, display the size of memory in (KB) Kilobytes.

# free -k

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1021628     912520     109108          0     120368     655548
-/+ buffers/cache:     136604     885024
Swap:      4194296          0    4194296

4. Display Memory in Megabytes

To see the size of the memory in (MB) Megabytes use option as -m.

# free -m

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           997        891        106          0        117        640
-/+ buffers/cache:        133        864
Swap:         4095          0       4095

5. Display Memory in Gigabytes

Using -g option with free command, would display the size of the memory in GB(Gigabytes).

# free -g
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:             0          0          0          0          0          0
-/+ buffers/cache:          0          0
Swap:            3          0          3

6. Display Total Line

Free command with -t option, will list the total line at the end.

# free -t

            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1021628     912520     109108          0     120368     655548
-/+ buffers/cache:     136604     885024
Swap:      4194296          0    4194296
Total: 5215924 912520 4303404

7. Disable Display of Buffer Adjusted Line

By default the free command display “buffer adjusted” line, to disable this line use option as -o.

# free -o

            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1021628     912520     109108          0     120368     655548
Swap:      4194296          0    4194296

8. Dispaly Memory Status for Regular Intervals

The -s option with number, used to update free command at regular intervals. For example, the below command will update free command every 5 seconds.

# free -s 5

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1021628     912368     109260          0     120368     655548
-/+ buffers/cache:     136452     885176
Swap:      4194296          0    4194296

9. Show Low and High Memory Statistics

The -l switch displays detailed high and low memory size statistics.

# free -l

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1021628     912368     109260          0     120368     655548
Low:        890036     789064     100972
High:       131592     123304       8288
-/+ buffers/cache:     136452     885176
Swap:      4194296          0    4194296

10. Check Free Version

The -V option, display free command version information.

# free -V

procps version 3.2.8