The ps aux Command in Linux

If you are using Linux and looking for a tool that can monitor all the processes running on your system, then you should use the command ps aux.

This command will display an overview of all processes that are running. It’s very useful to troubleshoot the state and health of your system.

If you use the aux shortcut with the ps command, it will display the most information a user requires and can provide you with the current state of the system’s running process.

This article will see the ps aux command in Linux. We will discuss the topic using examples and explanations to make the topic easier.

the ps aux Command in Linux

1. ps - process status
2. a - an option that prints the running processes from all users.
3. u - an option that shows the user or owner column in the output.
4. x - an option that prints the processes that have not been executed from the terminal.

Below we illustrated the use of the ps aux command and its general output.

ps aux

Output:

USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root         1  0.0  0.0   8940   328 ?        Ssl  00:45   0:00 /init
root        10  0.0  0.0   8940   224 tty1     Ss   00:46   0:00 /init
author      11  0.1  0.0  18084  3580 tty1     S    00:46   0:00 -bash
author      69  0.0  0.0  18664  1896 tty1     R    00:49   0:00 ps aux

1. The field USER defines the usage of the process.
2. The field PID defines the Process Identity.
3. The field %CPU defines the process’ amount of CPU.
4. The field %MEM defines the amount of memory the process uses.
5. The field VSZ defines the amount of virtual memory the process uses.
6. The field RSS defines the process’ amount of physical memory.
7. The field TTY defines the controlling terminal that is associated with the process.
8. The field STAT defines the state information.
9. The field START defines the date or time the process started.
10. The field TIME defines the amount of CPU time the process uses.
11. The field COMMAND defines the command that is currently running.