PSTREE(1)

🌸 PSTREE(1) 🌸

Okay bestie, this is the pstree manual page, from the User Commands section. It's giving tree-shaped process vibes 🌳💖

🦋 NAME

pstree — display a tree of processes ✨

💅 SYNOPSIS

pstree [-a, --arguments] [-c, --compact-not] [-C, --color attr]
[-g, --show-pgids] [-h, --highlight-all, -H pid, --highlight-pid pid]
[-l, --long] [-n, --numeric-sort] [-N, --ns-sort ns] [-p, --show-pids]
[-s, --show-parents] [-S, --ns-changes] [-t, --thread-names]
[-T, --hide-threads] [-u, --uid-changes] [-Z, --security-context]
[-A, --ascii, -G, --vt100, -U, --unicode] [pid, user]
pstree -V, --version

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so pstree shows your running processes as a tree 🌳 The tree is rooted at either pid, or at init if you leave pid out. If you give it a user name, you get every process tree rooted at a process that user owns 🫶

pstree lowkey merges identical branches. It puts them in square brackets and adds the repetition count in front. For example:

    init-+-getty
         |-getty
         |-getty
         `-getty

becomes

    init---4*[getty]

Child threads of a process hang out under the parent process and show up with the process name in curly braces, like this:

    icecast2---13*[{icecast2}]

🙈 If you call it as pstree.x11, it will ask you to press return at the end of the line, and it won't come back until you do. This is handy when you run it in a xterminal.

Some kernel or mount parameters, like the hidepid option for procfs, hide info for certain processes. When that happens, pstree tries its best to build the tree without that info, and shows the process names as question marks 🤷‍♀️

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -a, --arguments — show the command line arguments 📜 If a process's command line has been swapped out, that process gets shown in parentheses. -a also turns off compaction for processes, but not for threads.
• -A, --ascii — draw the tree with ASCII characters 🔤
• -c, --compact-not — turn off compaction of identical subtrees 🙅‍♀️ By default, subtrees get compacted whenever it's possible.
• -C, --color attr — color the process name based on the attribute you give 🌈 Right now the only value pstree accepts is age, which colors by how old the process is. Processes younger than 60 seconds are green, ones newer than an hour are yellow, and everything else is red.
• -g, --show-pgids — show the PGIDs 🍓 Process Group IDs appear as decimal numbers in parentheses after each process name. If you show both PIDs and PGIDs, the PIDs come first.
• -G, --vt100 — draw with VT100 line drawing characters 🧚
• -h, --highlight-all — highlight the current process and its ancestors ✨ This does nothing if your terminal can't highlight, or if neither the current process nor any of its ancestors are in the subtree being shown.
• -H pid, --highlight-pid pid — same vibe as -h, but you get to pick the process to highlight 🎯 Unlike -h, pstree fails when you use -H and highlighting isn't available.
• -l, --long — display long lines 📏 By default, lines get truncated to either the COLUMNS environment variable or the display width. If neither of those works, it falls back to 132 columns.
• -n, --numeric-sort — sort processes with the same parent by PID instead of by name 🔢 (Numeric sort, periodt.)
• -N ns, --ns-sort ns — show separate trees for each namespace of the type you pick 🪞 The available types are: ipc, mnt, net, pid, time, user, uts. Regular users can't see other users' process info, so the output will be limited for them 💀
• -p, --show-pids — show the PIDs 🔍 PIDs appear as decimal numbers in parentheses after each process name. -p also turns off compaction.
• -s, --show-parents — show the parent processes of the specified process 👑
• -S, --ns-changes — show namespace transitions 🔄 Just like -N, the output is limited when you run it as a regular user.
• -t, --thread-names — show full names for threads when they're available 🧵
• -T, --hide-threads — hide threads and only show processes 🫥
• -u, --uid-changes — show uid transitions 🪪 Whenever a process's uid is different from its parent's uid, the new uid shows up in parentheses after the process name.
• -U, --unicode — draw with UTF-8 (Unicode) line drawing characters 💜 On Linux 1.1-54 and above, UTF-8 mode gets switched on at the console with echo -e ' 33%8' and switched off with echo -e ' 33%@'.
• -V, --version — display version information 🎉
• -Z, --security-context — show the current security attributes of the process 🛡️ On SELinux systems, this is the security context.

🗂️ FILES

• /proc — where the proc file system lives 📁

🐛 BUGS

💀 Some character sets may not play nicely with the VT100 characters.

🫶 SEE ALSO

ps(1), top(1), proc(5).

That's the tea, bestie 💖 pstree is from the psmisc package, dated 2021-06-21, and it's PSTREE(1) forever ✨🦋👑