What do the stat codes mean when using the ps command?



  • Taken from the man page: https://www.lightnetics.com/post/5833

    PROCESS STATE CODES
           Here are the different values that the s, stat and state output
           specifiers (header "STAT" or "S") will display to describe the state of
           a process:
    
                   D    uninterruptible sleep (usually IO)
                   R    running or runnable (on run queue)
                   S    interruptible sleep (waiting for an event to complete)
                   T    stopped by job control signal
                   t    stopped by debugger during the tracing
                   W    paging (not valid since the 2.6.xx kernel)
                   X    dead (should never be seen)
                   Z    defunct ("zombie") process, terminated but not reaped by
                        its parent
    
           For BSD formats and when the stat keyword is used, additional
           characters may be displayed:
    
                   <    high-priority (not nice to other users)
                   N    low-priority (nice to other users)
                   L    has pages locked into memory (for real-time and custom IO)
                   s    is a session leader
                   l    is multi-threaded (using CLONE_THREAD, like NPTL pthreads
                        do)
                   +    is in the foreground process group
    


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