Using PS in Suse

The command ps produces a list of processes. If the parameter r is added, only processes currently using computing time are shown:

$ ps r
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
22163 pts/7    R      0:01 -zsh
 3396 pts/3    R      0:03 emacs new-makedoc.txt
20027 pts/7    R      0:25 emacs xml/common/utilities.xml
20974 pts/7    R      0:01 emacs jj.xml
27454 pts/7    R      0:00 ps r

This parameter must be written without a minus sign. The various parameters are written sometimes with and sometimes without the minus sign. The man page could easily frighten off potential users, but fortunately the ps –help command produces a brief page of help.

To check how many emacs processes are running, use:

$ ps x | grep emacs
 1288 ?        S      0:07 emacs
 3396 pts/3    S      0:04 emacs new-makedoc.txt
 3475 ?        S      0:03 emacs .Xresources
20027 pts/7    S      0:40 emacs xml/common/utilities.xml
20974 pts/7    S      0:02 emacs jj.xml

$ pidof emacs
20974 20027 3475 3396 1288

The parameter -p selects processes via the process ID:

$ ps www -p $(pidof xterm)
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
 9025 ?        S      0:01 xterm -g 100x45+0+200
 9176 ?        S      0:00 xterm -g 100x45+0+200
29854 ?        S      0:21 xterm -g 100x75+20+0 -fn \
  -B&H-LucidaTypewriter-Medium-R-Normal-Sans-12-120-75-75-M-70-iso10646-1
 4378 ?        S      0:01 xterm -bg MistyRose1 -T root -n root -e su -l
25543 ?        S      0:02 xterm -g 100x45+0+200
22161 ?        R      0:14 xterm -g 100x45+0+200
16832 ?        S      0:01 xterm -bg MistyRose1 -T root -n root -e su -l
16912 ?        S      0:00 xterm -g 100x45+0+200
17861 ?        S      0:00 xterm -bg DarkSeaGreen1 -g 120x45+40+300
19930 ?        S      0:13 xterm -bg LightCyan
21686 ?        S      0:04 xterm -g 100x45+0+200 -fn \
lucidasanstypewriter-12
23104 ?        S      0:00 xterm -g 100x45+0+200
26547 ?        S      0:00 xterm -g 100x45+0+200

The process list can be formatted according to your needs. The option -L returns a list of all keywords. Enter the following command to issue a list of all processes sorted by memory usage:

$ ps ax --format pid,rss,cmd --sort rss
  PID  RSS CMD
    2    0 [ksoftirqd/0]
    3    0 [events/0]
   17    0 [kblockd/0]
[...]
10164 5260 xterm
31110 5300 xterm
17010 5356 xterm
 3896 29292 /usr/X11R6/bin/X -nolisten tcp -br vt7 -auth /var/lib/xdm/authdir/au