ps a process keeping the header info so you know what the columns of numbers mean!

ps auxw |egrep "PID|process_to_look_at"
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 1828 0.0 0.0 5396 476 ? Ss 2008 0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd
Sample Output 
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root      1828  0.0  0.0   5396   476 ?        Ss    2008   0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd

4
By: tsaavik
2009-02-20 00:17:43
ps
2
Submit An Alternative

What Others Think

Great command! How do I not show the egrep process? square brackets don't seem to work.
Williebee · 657 weeks and 3 days ago
@ Willie: ps auxw |egrep "[P]ID|[f]irefox" seems to work for me
Ward · 612 weeks and 5 days ago

What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

You must be signed in to comment.

What's this?

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

Share Your Commands

Similar Commands

format txt as table not joining empty columns adding header with column numbers

df output, sorted by Use% and correctly maintaining header row

Add page numbers to a PDF

Display rows and columns of random numbers with awk

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: