Note - the ps command may be slightly different on your system, depending on the type of system you have. The examples shown here work on systems derived from AT&T's original Unix System V ps command.

The ps command by itself shows minimal information about the processes you are running. Without any arguments, this command will not show information about other processes running on the system.

ps -f

The -f argument tells ps to supply full information about the processes it displays. In this example, ps displays full information about the processes you are running.

ps -e

The -e argument tells the ps command to show every process running on the system.

ps -ef

The -e and -f arguments are normally combined like this to show full information about every process running on the system. This is probably the most often-used form of the ps command.

ps -ef | more

Because the output normally scrolls off the screen, the output of the ps -ef command is often piped into the more command. The more command lets you view one screenful of information at a time.

ps -fu fred

This command shows full information about the processes currently being run by the user named fred (the -u option lets you specify a username).