Commands using ps sorted by votes

Commands using ps (300)

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Display CPU usage in percentage
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

ps aux | awk {'sum+=$3;print sum'} | tail -n 1

tailot · 2011-07-16 16:16:59 3
Force kill all named processes
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

kill -9 $(ps -ef | grep [h]ttpd | awk '{print $2}')

peterRepeater · 2012-02-28 13:15:55 5
Show total cumulative memory usage of a process that spawns multiple instances of itself
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

CMD=chrome ; ps h -o pmem -C $CMD | awk '{sum+=$1} END {print sum}'

pdxdoughnut · 2014-01-08 23:05:09 8

Sort all processes by the amount of virtual memory they are using

left-most column is PID, middle is virtual memory being consumed, right-most is actual process. Show Sample Output

-1

ps -e -o pid,vsz,comm= | sort -n -k 2

jmorganwalker · 2014-05-14 00:36:50 12

ps to show child thread PIDs
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

ps -efL | grep <Process Name>

tsener · 2014-09-11 16:35:31 8
Find a process by name and automatically kill it
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

ps aux | grep name | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9

unixmonkey84604 · 2014-11-11 09:19:24 8

Shortcut to search a process by name

Function that searchs a process by its name and shows in the terminal. * Shows the Header for reference * Hides the process 'grep' from the list * Case sensitive Show Sample Output

-1

psg(){ ps aux | grep -v grep | egrep -e "$1|USER"; }

ivanalejandro0 · 2014-12-31 22:27:27 9

Search for a running process through grep
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

ps -e | grep SearchStringHere

Sanjay · 2009-02-05 15:41:00 41
find and kill a pid for APP

Probably posted previously, I use this all the time to find and kill a process for "APP". Simply replace "APP" with the name of the process you're looking to kill.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

ps -ef | grep APP | awk '/grep/!{print$2}' | xargs -i kill {}

hooobs · 2009-02-05 16:10:05 24
UNIX one-liner to kill a hanging Firefox process

The description of how the one-liner works is here at my blog: http://jugad2.blogspot.com/2008/09/unix-one-liner-to-kill-hanging-firefox.html Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Imaging a Firefox window disappearing :-)
(It kills the hanging firefox process.)
```
-2

kill -HUP ` ps -aef | grep -i firefox | sort -k 2 -r | sed 1d | awk ' { print $2 } ' `

vasudevram · 2009-02-07 10:10:45 21
Killing multiplpe process for one program like apache, wget, postfix etc.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

ps aux| grep -v grep| grep httpd| awk {'print $2'}| xargs kill -9

r00t4u · 2009-12-06 05:39:50 7
Killing multiplpe process for one program like apache, wget, postfix etc.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

ps ax| awk '/[h]ttpd/{print $1}'| xargs kill -9

r00t4u · 2009-12-07 09:53:18 4
Wait for an already launched program to stop before starting a new command.

The '[r]' is to avoid grep from grepping itself. (interchange 'r' by the appropriate letter) Here is an example that I use a lot (as root or halt will not work): while (ps -ef | grep [w]get); do sleep 10; done; sleep 60; halt I add the 'sleep 60' command just in case something went wrong; so that I have time to cancel. Very useful if you are going to bed while downloading something and do not want your computer running all night.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

while (ps -ef | grep [r]unning_program_name); do sleep 10; done; command_to_execute

m_a_xim · 2010-01-14 16:26:34 3
kill all instances of an annoying or endless, thread-spawning process
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

ps auxwww | grep outofcontrolprocess | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9

unixmonkey8311 · 2010-06-30 15:52:52 6
count how many cat processes are running
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

ps -a |grep cat |wc -l

schmiddim · 2010-09-22 23:57:19 3
count how many cat processes are running
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

ps -cx cat

krissi · 2010-09-23 12:28:07 3
Find the correct PID

I know you can use pidof but with this you can know the specific PID with his command arguments (useful if you're running various proccess with same application)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

pss() { ps -eo pid,args | sed '/'"$1"'/!d;/sed/d' ; }

vando · 2011-03-14 15:51:49 5
see who is on this machine
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

who;ps aux|grep ssh

wynemo · 2011-04-01 06:32:28 3
Get pid of running Apache Tomcat process
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

ps -eo pid,args | grep -v grep | grep catalina | awk '{print $1}'

evandrix · 2011-06-27 14:29:49 3
kill defunct processes by killing their parents

defunct processes (zombies) usually have to be killed by killing their parent processes. this command retrieves such zombies and their immediate parents and kills all of the matching processes.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

ps afx | grep defunct -B 1 | grep -Eo "[0-9]{3,}" | xargs kill -9

pholz · 2012-04-27 16:16:34 3
Renice a group of threads
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

renice -20 -g 2874 (2784 found with ps -Aj)

techie · 2013-05-07 14:55:42 88
Search for a process by name

Function that searchs for process by its name: * Shows the Header for reference * Hides the process 'grep' from the list * Case sensitive The typical problem with using "ps | grep" is that the grep process shows up the in the output. The usual solution is to search for "[p]attern" instead of "pattern". This function turns the parameter into just such a [p]attern. ${1:0:1} is the first character of $1 . ${1:1} is characters 2-end of $1 Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ psg fire
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root      1102  0.0  0.2 326352 12884 ?        Ssl   2014   0:00 /usr/bin/python -Es /usr/sbin/firewalld --nofork --nopid
flatcap  25571  7.1  7.5 1362784 451836 ?      Sl    2014   1:31 /usr/lib64/firefox/firefox
```
-2

psg(){ ps aux | grep -E "[${1:0:1}]${1:1}|^USER"; }

flatcap · 2015-01-01 00:12:45 9

look what's running

Thanks to pooderbill for the idea :-) Show Sample Output

-2

for a in $(ls /usr/sbin /usr/bin); do ps -fC $a;done|grep -v PPID

knoppix5 · 2015-04-27 18:15:56 10

find all processes named hunger and force kill, minus the grep itself and output to a file called fu.bar
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

ps -auwx|egrep hunger|grep -v grep| awk '{print "kill -9",$1}' > ~/fu.bar

lendellray · 2009-02-05 11:43:38 30
Kill process by searching something from 'ps' command
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

ps ux|grep <process name>|awk '{print $2}'|xargs -n 1 kill

metalx1000 · 2010-06-18 20:12:37 3
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Most simple way to get a list of open ports

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)

swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

Find default gateway

Copy ssh keys to user@host to enable password-less ssh logins.

Same as original just no $ at start

Check if system is 32bit or 64bit

Needed a quick way to see if my server distro that I setup years ago was running 32bit or not, since with time I had forgotten. Note: does not check _hardware_ e.g. /proc/cpuinfo but rather the kernel installed

Give all those pictures the same name format, trailing zeros please for the right order, offset to merge different collections of pictures

When you have different digital cameras, different people, friends and you want to merge all those pictures together, then you get files with same names or files with 3 and 4 digit numbers etc. The result is a mess if you copy it together into one directory. But if you can add an offset to the picture number and set the number of leading zeros in the file name's number then you can manage. OFFS != 0 and LZ the same as the files currently have is not supported. Or left as an exercise, hoho ;) I love NF="${NF/#+(0)/}",it looks like a magic bash spell.

Find files that were modified by a given command

This has helped me numerous times trying to find either log files or tmp files that get created after execution of a command. And really eye opening as to how active a given process really is. Play around with -anewer, -cnewer & -newerXY

Get AWS temporary credentials ready to export based on a MFA virtual appliance

You might want to secure your AWS operations requiring to use a MFA token. But then to use API or tools, you need to pass credentials generated with a MFA token. This commands asks you for the MFA code and retrieves these credentials using AWS Cli. To print the exports, you can use: `awk '{ print "export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=\"" $1 "\"\n" "export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=\"" $2 "\"\n" "export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=\"" $3 "\"" }'` You must adapt the command line to include: * $MFA_IDis ARN of the virtual MFA or serial number of the physical one * TTL for the credentials

Execute a command with a timeout

I like much more the perl solution, but without using perl. It launches a backgroup process that will kill the command if it lasts too much. A bigger function: check_with_timeout() { [ "$DEBUG" ] && set -x COMMAND=$1 TIMEOUT=$2 RET=0 # Launch command in backgroup [ ! "$DEBUG" ] && exec 6>&2 # Link file descriptor #6 with stderr. [ ! "$DEBUG" ] && exec 2> /dev/null # Send stderr to null (avoid the Terminated messages) $COMMAND 2>&1 >/dev/null & COMMAND_PID=$! [ "$DEBUG" ] && echo "Background command pid $COMMAND_PID, parent pid $$" # Timer that will kill the command if timesout sleep $TIMEOUT && ps -p $COMMAND_PID -o pid,ppid |grep $$ | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill & KILLER_PID=$! [ "$DEBUG" ] && echo "Killer command pid $KILLER_PID, parent pid $$" wait $COMMAND_PID RET=$? # Kill the killer timer [ "$DEBUG" ] && ps -e -o pid,ppid |grep $KILLER_PID | awk '{print $1}' | xargs echo "Killing processes: " ps -e -o pid,ppid |grep -v PID | grep $KILLER_PID | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill wait sleep 1 [ ! "$DEBUG" ] && exec 2>&6 6>&- # Restore stderr and close file descriptor #6. return $RET }

Write comments to your history.

A null operation with the name 'comment', allowing comments to be written to HISTFILE. Prepending '#' to a command will *not* write the command to the history file, although it will be available for the current session, thus '#' is not useful for keeping track of comments past the current session.

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Commands using ps (300)

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