AIX

Hi,

Can someone tell me what the difference is between ps -ef and ps aux. I was under the assumption that both commands would list ALL processes currently running on the system.

But on my server I find the following:

Code:

 
# ps
 -ef | wc -l
     519
# ps aux | wc -l
     571

What are these 52 processes found by aux? Can I identifty these processes with ps -ef as well?

Greetings,
Peter

There are two different flavours of UNIXes: System V and BSD. They differ in many architectural decisions and one of these is the process accounting and -managing.

Modern UNIXes are usually "best of both worlds", hybrids, and AIX is not different. In most cases AIX tries to accomodate the SysV-ways as well as the BSD-ways, usually implementing a third genuine AIX-way as well: for instance, have a look at the printing system, where you have the BSD command set, the SysV command set and both are mere frontends to a genuine AIX command set. There is also "tar" (BSD) but also "cpio" (SysV).

The "ps" command is part of the process accounting and -managing system. In AIX it serves in fact in two distinct roles: "ps" called with options without the dash works BSD-like, therefore

Code:

ps aux

shows the process table like a BSD-system would do. Options introduced by a dash switch "ps" to the SysV-mode of operation, therefore:

Code:

ps -ef

shows the process table like a System-V-system. The difference in the process numbers are because "-e" is different to "a" in what is shown. Certain kernel threads are not included in "-e"s output while they are in "a". Try using "-A" instead of "-e", but first read the man page of "ps" to get the details about which option does what and how you can combine them.

I hope this helps.

bakunin