PSTREE(1) User Commands PSTREE(1)NAMEpstree - display a tree of processes
SYNOPSISpstree [-a|--arguments] [-c|--compact] [-h|--high‐
light-all|-Hpid|--highlight-pid pid] [-g]--show-pgids] [-l|--long]
[-n|--numeric-sort] [-p|--show-pids] [-s|--show-parents]
[-u|--uid-changes] [-Z|--security-context]
[-A|--ascii|-G|--vt100|-U|--unicode] [pid|user]
pstree -V|--version
DESCRIPTIONpstree shows running processes as a tree. The tree is rooted at either
pid or init if pid is omitted. If a user name is specified, all process
trees rooted at processes owned by that user are shown.
pstree visually merges identical branches by putting them in square
brackets and prefixing them with the repetition count, e.g.
init-+-getty
|-getty
|-getty
`-getty
becomes
init---4*[getty]
Child threads of a process are found under the parent process and are
shown with the process name in curly braces, e.g.
icecast2---13*[{icecast2}]
If pstree is called as pstree.x11 then it will prompt the user at the
end of the line to press return and will not return until that has hap‐
pened. This is useful for when pstree is run in a xterminal.
OPTIONS-a Show command line arguments. If the command line of a process is
swapped out, that process is shown in parentheses. -a implicitly
disables compaction for processes but not threads.
-A Use ASCII characters to draw the tree.
-c Disable compaction of identical subtrees. By default, subtrees
are compacted whenever possible.
-G Use VT100 line drawing characters.
-h Highlight the current process and its ancestors. This is a no-op
if the terminal doesn't support highlighting or if neither the
current process nor any of its ancestors are in the subtree
being shown.
-H Like -h, but highlight the specified process instead. Unlike
with -h, pstree fails when using -H if highlighting is not
available.
-g Show PGIDs. Process Group IDs are shown as decimal numbers in
parentheses after each process name. -p implicitly disables com‐
paction. If both PIDs and PGIDs are displayed then PIDs are
shown first.
-l Display long lines. By default, lines are truncated to the dis‐
play width or 132 if output is sent to a non-tty or if the dis‐
play width is unknown.
-n Sort processes with the same ancestor by PID instead of by name.
(Numeric sort.)
-p Show PIDs. PIDs are shown as decimal numbers in parentheses
after each process name. -p implicitly disables compaction.
-s Show parent processes of the specified process.
-u Show uid transitions. Whenever the uid of a process differs from
the uid of its parent, the new uid is shown in parentheses after
the process name.
-U Use UTF-8 (Unicode) line drawing characters. Under Linux 1.1-54
and above, UTF-8 mode is entered on the console with echo -e
'\033%8' and left with echo -e '\033%@'
-V Display version information.
-Z (SELinux) Show security context for each process. This flag will
only work if pstree is compilied with SELinux support.
FILES
/proc location of the proc file system
AUTHORS
Werner Almesberger <werner@almesberger.net> Craig Small
<csmall@enc.com.au>
BUGS
Some character sets may be incompatible with the VT100 characters.
SEE ALSOps(1), top(1).
Linux 2012-05-20 PSTREE(1)
