Hide

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again.

Delete that bloated snippets file you've been using and share your personal repository with the world. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

If you have a new feature suggestion or find a bug, please get in touch via http://commandlinefu.uservoice.com/

Get involved!

You can sign-in using OpenID credentials, or register a traditional username and password.

OpenID
or
Sign in Register

First-time OpenID users will be automatically assigned a username which can be changed after signing in.

Hide

Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for:

Hide

News

2011-03-12 - Confoo 2011 presentation
Slides are available from the commandlinefu presentation at Confoo 2011: http://presentations.codeinthehole.com/confoo2011/
2011-01-04 - Moderation now required for new commands
To try and put and end to the spamming, new commands require moderation before they will appear on the site.
2010-12-27 - Apologies for not banning the trolls sooner
Have been away from the interwebs over Christmas. Will be more vigilant henceforth.
2010-09-24 - OAuth and pagination problems fixed
Apologies for the delay in getting Twitter's OAuth supported. Annoying pagination gremlin also fixed.
Hide

Tags

Hide

Functions

Hide

Credits

Site by David Winterbottom (user root).

Commands using ps

Commands using ps from sorted by
Terminal - Commands using ps - 190 results
kill -9 -$(ps x -o "%c %r" | awk '/svscan/{print $2}')
2012-05-25 16:39:02
User: SEJeff
Functions: awk kill ps
Tags: Linux kill commandlinefu crimsonfu
0
Up
Down
Kill the process *group* containing a process named svscan (djb's daemontools)

Daemontools[1] won't always properly reap it's children. Sometimes when you need to kill the main svscan process, you want to also clean up all of it's children. The way to do that is to send a signal to the entire process group. It is a bit tricky

[1] http://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ps -e h -o pid --sort -pcpu | head -10 | vzpid -
2012-05-24 14:16:40
User: mrkmg
Functions: head ps
Tags: openvz
0
Up
Down
See OpenVZ Container id's of top 10 running processes by %cpu

This command will list the PID, VEID, and Name of the 10 highest cpu using processes on a openvz host. You must have vzpid installed.

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
slow () { [ -n $1 ] && while ps -p $1 >/dev/null ; do kill -STOP $1; sleep 1; kill -CONT $1; sleep 1; done & }
2012-05-16 12:13:30
User: igorfu
Functions: kill ps sleep
Tags: io
1
Up
Down
Slow down IO heavy process

Some IO intensive process make the system unresponsive. This function periodically starts/stops a process, which hopefully releases some resources for other activities.

This function is useful when ionice is not available

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ps afx | grep defunct -B 1 | grep -Eo "[0-9]{3,}" | xargs kill -9
2012-04-27 16:16:34
User: pholz
Functions: grep kill ps xargs
0
Up
Down
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.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ps afx|grep [a]pache
2012-04-16 03:50:32
User: caruccio
Functions: grep ps
Tags: ps grep
0
Up
Down
Remove grep itself from ps

When you 'ps|grep' for a given process, it turns out that grep itself appears as a valid line since it contains the RE/name you are looking for. To avoid grep from showing itself, simply insert some wildcard into process' name.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
_p(){ ps ax |grep $1 |sed '/grep.'"$1"'/d' |while read a;do printf ${a%% *}' ';printf "${a#* }" >&2;printf '\n';done;}
2012-04-01 19:46:19
User: argv
Functions: grep printf ps read sed
0
Up
Down
w/o pgrep/pkill

proc lister

usage: p

proc killer

usage: p patt [signal]

uses only ps, grep, sed, printf and kill

no need for pgrep/pkill (not part of early UNIX)

_p(){

ps ax \

|grep $1 \

|sed '

/grep.'"$1"'/d' \

|while read a;do

printf ${a%% *}' ';

printf "${a#* }" >&2;

printf '\n';

done;

}

p(){

case $# in

0)

ps ax |grep .|less -iE;

;;

1)

_p $1;

;;

[23])

_p $1 2>/dev/null \

|sed '/'"$2"'/!d;

s,.*,kill -'"${3-15}"' &,'|sh -v

;;

esac;

}

alas, can't get this under 255 chars.

flatcap?

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
_p(){ ps ax |grep $1 |sed '/grep.'"$1"'/d' |while read a;do printf ${a%% *}' ';printf "${a#* }" >&2;printf '\n';done;}
2012-04-01 19:45:17
User: argv
Functions: grep printf ps read sed
0
Up
Down
process lister/killer - no pgrep and pkill

proc lister

usage: p

proc killer

usage: p patt [signal]

uses only ps, grep, sed, printf and kill

no need for pgrep/pkill (not part of early UNIX)

_p(){

ps ax \

|grep $1 \

|sed '

/grep.'"$1"'/d' \

|while read a;do

printf ${a%% *}' ';

printf "${a#* }" >&2;

printf '\n';

done;

}

p(){

case $# in

0)

ps ax |grep .|less -iE;

;;

1)

_p $1;

;;

[23])

_p $1 2>/dev/null \

|sed '/'"$2"'/!d;

s,.*,kill -'"${3-15}"' &,'|sh -v

;;

esac;

}

alas, can't get this under 255 chars.

flatcap?

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ps aux | awk '$11!~/\[*\]/ {print $6/1024" Mb --> "$11,$12,$13,$14}' | sort -g
2012-03-23 20:59:33
User: dererk
Functions: awk ps sort
2
Up
Down
"What the hell is running on?!" Easily snoop your system's RAM consumption

Works on most unixes, on OpenBSD replace the "-g" parameter at the sort with a "-n".

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ps h --ppid $(cat /var/run/apache2.pid) | awk '{print"-p " $1}' | xargs sudo strace
2012-03-21 01:59:41
User: colinmollenhour
Functions: awk cat ps sudo xargs
Tags: awk apache ps strace
1
Up
Down
easily strace all your apache *child* processes

Like the original version except it does not include the parent apache process or the grep process and adds "sudo" so it can be run by user.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
adb shell ps | grep my.app.packagename | awk '{print $2}' | xargs -I ? sh -c "adb logcat -v time | grep ?"
2012-03-14 10:02:11
User: jackpatmos
Functions: awk grep ps sh xargs
Tags: adb
0
Up
Down
Filter Android log output by PID
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
adb shell ps | grep <process name> | awk '{print $2}' | xargs adb shell kill
2012-03-03 01:03:39
User: riansanderson
Functions: awk grep ps xargs
0
Up
Down
kill an arbitrary process running on an Android device attached via USB debug cable

This is great when you need to reboot the system-server, or your own daemon that has gone crazy

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
for i in $(ps x | grep chrome | cut -d"?" -f1 | grep -v chrome); do kill -9 $i ; done
2012-03-01 03:41:39
User: sandeepvreddy
Functions: cut grep kill ps
Tags: kill process kill google chrome
0
Up
Down
Kill google chrome process

This one liner is to kill all google chrome tabs. This works similar to $ killall firefox command which is to kill all firefox processes.

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
kill -9 $(ps -ef | grep [h]ttpd | awk '{print $2}')
2012-02-28 13:15:55
User: peterRepeater
Functions: awk grep kill ps
-1
Up
Down
Force kill all named processes
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
PID=httpd ; ps aux | grep $PID | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9
2012-02-21 23:27:47
User: esaenz
Functions: awk grep kill ps xargs
-4
Up
Down
kill all pids from $PID

# define user pid to kill

PID=httpd ;

# kill all pids

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

Show sample output | Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
for i in $(ps -eo pid,pmem,pcpu| sort -k 3 -r|grep -v PID|head -10|awk '{print $1}');do diff -yw <(pidstat -p $i|grep -v Linux) <(ps -o euser,pri,psr,pmem,stat -p $i|tail);done
2012-02-16 20:54:32
User: bob_the_builder
Functions: awk diff grep head ps sort
0
Up
Down
Displays user-defined ps output and pidstat output about the top CPU or MEMory users.

It grabs the PID's top resource users with $(ps -eo pid,pmem,pcpu| sort -k 3 -r|grep -v PID|head -10)

The sort -k is sorting by the third field which would be CPU. Change this to 2 and it will sort accordingly.

The rest of the command is just using diff to display the output of 2 commands side-by-side (-y flag) I chose some good ones for ps.

pidstat comes with the sysstat package(sar, mpstat, iostat, pidstat) so if you don't have it, you should.

I might should take off the timestamp... :|

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ps -p $$
2012-02-09 17:27:45
User: robinsonaarond
Functions: ps
4
Up
Down
Print current running shell, PID

works as well as echo $0, but also prints process id, which pts you're using. echo $SHELL doesn't always get updated when changing shells, so this is a better solution than that. Just one more variation on a theme.

Show sample output | Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ps -fea | grep PATTERN | awk {'print $2'} | xargs kill -9
2012-01-27 20:31:36
User: k4ch0
Functions: awk grep kill ps xargs
Tags: awk xargs grep kill print ps
0
Up
Down
Kill processes associated with PATTERN

Kill all process that concide whit PATTERN

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ps -eo rss,vsz,pid,cputime,cmd --width 100 --sort rss,vsz | tail --lines 10
2012-01-08 20:51:38
User: kenyon
Functions: ps tail
2
Up
Down
Display the top 10 running processes - sorted by memory usage

A pretty nice display of processes.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ps -ef | grep [j]ava | awk -F ' ' ' { print $1," ",$2,"\t",$(NF-2),"\t",$(NF-1),"\t",$NF } ' | sort -k4
2012-01-05 16:05:48
User: drockney
Functions: awk grep ps sort
Tags: sort awk grep ps
0
Up
Down
Show WebSphere AppServer uid|pid|cell|node|jvms

Tested in bash on AIX & Linux, used for WAS versions 6.0 & up. Sorts by node name.

Useful when you have vertically-stacked instances of WAS/Portal. Cuts out all the classpath/optional parameter clutter that makes a simple "ps -ef | grep java" so difficult to sort through.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
sudo ps aux --sort:rss | awk '{print $2"\t"$11": "$6/1024" MB"}' | column -t | less
2011-12-08 17:23:18
User: threv
Functions: awk column ps sudo
Tags: memory usage Linux ps awk, sort
0
Up
Down
Find and sort by Resident Size of each process on the system in MB
Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ps -p pid -o logname |tail -1
2011-11-21 01:33:02
User: grep
Functions: logname ps tail
Tags: bash awk grep ps
0
Up
Down
Get the name or user running the process of specified PID
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ps aux | grep PID | grep -v 'grep' | awk '{ print $1 }'
2011-11-05 04:53:29
User: nssy
Functions: awk grep ps
Tags: bash awk grep ps
0
Up
Down
Get the name or user running the process of specified PID

Gets the current system user running a process with the specified pid

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ps -ef --sort=-%cpu
2011-10-14 21:57:51
User: aguslr
Functions: ps
Tags: cpu usage cpu proc process
4
Up
Down
List processes sorted by CPU usage
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ps ewwo command PID | tr ' ' '\n' | grep \=
2011-09-15 12:07:46
User: axii
Functions: command grep ps tr
Tags: tr bsd ps environment ipso
1
Up
Down
Given process ID print its environment variables

Same as previous but compatible with BSD/IPSO

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ps aux | sort -nk 6
2011-08-16 11:04:45
User: totti
Functions: ps sort
Tags: sort ps
2
Up
Down
Sort output by column

(separator = $IFS)

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate