Example uses of the command "ps"

A common way to use the ps command is:

ps ux

which shows all the processes currently running under your username in an easy to read table format. The "u" specifies the format, and the "x" makes sure all processes under your user name are included.

The displayed table has the following colomns:

USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND

which includes the user name, the process ID, percent of CPU used, percent of memory used, virtual and resident memory size, start time and accumulated time, and finally the command line used to start the process.

To include all processes of all users you would add the "-a" flag:

ps -aux

To see the processes running under another user name you would use the "U" flag. For example

ps U jjones

will list all processes run by user "jjones".

Adding the "u" flag will list the processes in the user friendly format:

ps uU jjones

For all available options of the ps command see the man page.