Examples of using the ps command

To display information about your processes that are currently running:

   ps
      PID TTY         TIME COMMAND
    13185 ttyAF/ABFd  0:00 rlogind
    13187 ttyAF/ABFd  0:01 bash
    13218 ttyAF/ABFd  0:00 ps

This user currently has three active processes; the process associated with the ps command itself (13218); their current shell (13187) and a process associated with the remote login (13185) which indicates that they have logged in to their account on this system from another system.

To display information about all your processes (System V)

   ps -u joanne
      PID TTY         TIME COMMAND
    13251 ttyAF/ABFd  0:00 ps
    13187 ttyAF/ABFd  0:01 bash
    18765 ?           0:08 xclock
     3012 ?           0:00 bash
     3015 ?           0:00 zmail.ne
     3016 ?           4:03 zmail.bi
    18465 ?           0:00 bash
    18469 ?           0:34 xman

This user has several processes that are not associated with a controlling terminal. They can be identified by the ? (question mark) under the TTY column.

To display information about the processes associated with another user (System V)

   ps -u rob
      PID TTY         TIME COMMAND
    1390 ttyAH/ABHb  0:18 bash
    1403 ttyAH/ABHc  0:01 bash
    1435 ttyAH/ABHY  0:01 bash
    1471 ttyAH/ABHY  5:57 ream
    2307 ttyAH/ABHb  0:29 xbiff
    2315 ttyAH/ABHb  0:27 xbiff

The user rob is running three instances of the bash shell, a mail program known as ream and two biff utilities.