|
HTML rendering created 2026-01-16 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
|
|
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | FILES | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
|
|
|
PSTREE(1) User Commands PSTREE(1)
pstree - display a tree of processes
pstree [option ...] [pid , user]
pstree shows running processes as a tree. The tree is rooted at
either pid or init if pid is omitted. If a user name is
specified, all process trees rooted at processes owned by that
user are shown.
pstree visually merges identical branches by putting them in
square brackets and prefixing them with the repetition count, e.g.
init-+-getty
|-getty
|-getty
`-getty
becomes
init---4*[getty]
Child threads of a process are found under the parent process and
are shown with the process name in curly braces, e.g.
icecast2---13*[{icecast2}]
If pstree is called as pstree.x11 then it will prompt the user at
the end of the line to press return and will not return until that
has happened. This is useful for when pstree is run in a
xterminal.
Certain kernel or mount parameters, such as the hidepid option for
procfs, will hide information for some processes. In these
situations pstree will attempt to build the tree without this
information, showing process names as question marks.
-a, --arguments
Show command line arguments. If the command line of a
process is swapped out, that process is shown in
parentheses. -a implicitly disables compaction for
processes but not threads.
-A, --ascii
Use ASCII characters to draw the tree.
-c, --compact-not
Disable compaction of identical subtrees. By default,
subtrees are compacted whenever possible.
-C, --color=TYPE
Color the process name by given attribute. Currently pstree
only accepts the value age which colors by process age.
Processes newer than 60 seconds are green, newer than an
hour yellow and the remaining red.
-g, --show-pgids
Show PGIDs. Process Group IDs are shown as decimal numbers
in parentheses after each process name. If both PIDs and
PGIDs are displayed then PIDs are shown first.
-G, --vt100
Use VT100 line drawing characters.
-h, --hightlight-all
Highlight the current process and its ancestors. This is a
no-op if the terminal doesn't support highlighting or if
neither the current process nor any of its ancestors are in
the subtree being shown.
-H, --highlight-pid=PID
Like -h, but highlight the specified process instead.
Unlike with -h, pstree fails when using -H if highlighting
is not available.
-k, --kthreads
Show kernel threads.
-l, --long
Display long lines. By default, lines are truncated to
either the COLUMNS environment variable or the display
width. If neither of these methods work, the default of
132 columns is used.
-n, --numeric-sort
Sort processes with the same parent by PID instead of by
name. (Numeric sort.)
-N, --ns-sort=TYPE
Show individual trees for each namespace of TYPE. The
available types are: ipc, mnt, net, pid, time, user, uts.
Regular users don't have access to other users' processes
information, so the output will be limited.
-p, --show-pids
Show PIDs. PIDs are shown as decimal numbers in
parentheses after each process name. -p implicitly
disables compaction.
-P --show-paths
Show the full path to the running process on disk.
-s, --show-parents
Show parent processes of the specified process.
-S, --ns-changes
Show namespaces transitions. Like -N, the output is
limited when running as a regular user.
-t, --thread-names
Show full names for threads when available.
-T, --hide-threads
Hide threads and only show processes.
-u, --uid-changes
Show uid transitions. Whenever the uid of a process
differs from the uid of its parent, the new uid is shown in
parentheses after the process name.
-U, --unicode
Use UTF-8 (Unicode) line drawing characters. Under Linux
1.1-54 and above, UTF-8 mode is entered on the console with
echo -e ' 33%8' and left with echo -e ' 33%@'.
-V, --version
Display version information.
-Z, --security-context
Show the current security attributes of the process. For
SELinux systems this will be the security context.
/proc location of the proc file system
Some character sets may be incompatible with the VT100 characters.
ps(1), top(1), proc(5).
This page is part of the psmisc (Small utilities that use the
/proc filesystem) project. Information about the project can be
found at ⟨https://gitlab.com/psmisc/psmisc⟩. If you have a bug
report for this manual page, see
⟨https://gitlab.com/psmisc/psmisc/issues⟩. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://gitlab.com/psmisc/psmisc.git⟩ on 2026-01-16. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-10-21.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
psmisc 2025-10-21 PSTREE(1)
Pages that refer to this page: ps(1), proc(5)
|
HTML rendering created 2026-01-16 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
|