Processes

Process-related commands

View

Process status

$ ps

NAME
     ps -- process status


     The ps utility displays a header line, followed by lines containing information about
     all of your processes that have controlling terminals.

e.g.

$ ps -aux

     -a      Display information about other users' processes as well as your own.  This will
             skip any processes which do not have a controlling terminal, unless the -x
             option is also specified.

     -u      Display the processes belonging to the specified usernames.

     -x      When displaying processes matched by other options, include processes which do
             not have a controlling terminal.  This is the opposite of the -X option.  If
             both -X and -x are specified in the same command, then ps will use the one which
             was specified last.

Process tree

$ pstree

Top

NAME
     top -- display and update sorted information about processes

$ top

Interactive top

NAME
       htop - interactive process viewer

$ htop

Find process

Find processes with names matching a pattern. Returns as multi-line output of IDs.

$ pgrep

     pgrep [-Lafilnoqvx] [-F pidfile] [-G gid] [-P ppid] [-U uid] [-d delim] [-g pgrp]
           [-t tty] [-u euid] pattern ...

e.g.

$ grep firefox
48402

$ pgrep apple
233
272
356
359
403
417
444
455

Stop process

Kill by ID

$ kill

NAME
     kill -- terminate or signal a process

SYNOPSIS
     kill [-s signal_name] pid ...
     kill -l [exit_status]
     kill -signal_name pid ...
     kill -signal_number pid ...

Kill by name

$ pkill

NAME
     pgrep, pkill -- find or signal processes by name

     pkill [-signal] [-ILafilnovx] [-F pidfile] [-G gid] [-P ppid] [-U uid] [-g pgrp]
           [-t tty] [-u euid] pattern ...

e.g.

$ pkill -9 python