PSLIST(1)

💖 PSLIST(1) — the process-wrangling one 💖

General Commands Manual energy, but make it a group chat. Bestie, sit down, we're gonna talk about pslist — it controls processes and all their little descendants, like the world's most responsible babysitter. ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

pslist — control processes and their descendants 🫶

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

pslist [pid/name...]
pslist -h | --help
pslist -v | --version

rkill [-SIG] pid/name...

rrenice [+/-]pri pid/name...

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Okay so here's the tea. 🍓 The pslist utility goes and examines the list of current processes to find a specified process and all its descendants. You can point at a process either by name or by process ID — whichever, she's flexible like that. 💅

If you give her no arguments at all, pslist just displays a list of the whole process tree. The entire family tree, no cap. 🌳

And for each process you specify on the command line, pslist outputs a line containing:

• the process ID 👑
• the command name ✨
• the PIDs of all the descendants (and their descendants, etc.) — yes, it goes all the way down, it's giving generations 🧚

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💀 When she's invoked as rkill

Not me switching personalities 😭 When invoked as rkill, this utility does not display information about the processes. Instead, she sends them all a signal. Periodt.

If not specified on the command line, a terminate (SIGTERM) signal is sent. That's the default, bestie — so if you don't say what signal you want, she's picking SIGTERM for you. 💅

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🎀 When she's invoked as rrenice

When invoked as rrenice, this utility again does not display information about the processes — instead she attempts to set their nice value. Lowkey just adjusting the vibes of your processes. 🌈

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🔥 RETURN VALUES 🔥

The pslist utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. Simple as that. Zero means we ate, anything above zero means something went sideways. 😭

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• pgrep(1)
• pkill(1)

(the extended cinematic universe, fr fr 🫶)

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📜 HISTORY 📜

The pslist utility was written by Peter Pentchev in 2000. Vintage. Iconic. She's been serving since Y2K. ⭐

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

Peter Penchev ⟨roam@ringlet.net⟩

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And that's the whole page, bestie — this was the Debian build, dated June 1, 2009, filed under PSLIST(1). Go forth and wrangle some descendants. Mwah. 💖✨