UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi All,

I am trying to write a script to list all users and their processes. I cant seem to find out how to link the PID to the user. For example if i run ps -a I get a nice list of all the processes running and their PID, but no information about which user is running them.

If i use w i can see what the users are running but no reference to the PID, which i need. Basically I need to find PID, User, and tty. If i could link the PID to a user then i could simpley grep the PID lines from the ps -a return and get what I want, but I dont know how to find this info.

Thanks, Chris.

This may help you:

Code:

ps -ef | grep username

This depends on the version of ps you are using (X/Open or Berkeley) but, from man ps:

Code:

-o Format Displays information in the format specified by the Format variable.
Multiple field specifiers can be specified for the Format variable. The Format
variable is either a comma-separated list of field specifiers or a list of field
specifiers enclosed within a set of " " (double-quotation marks) and separated
from one another by a comma or by one or more spaces, or both.

This way you can select which information you want ps to display.

shereenmotor: ps -ef doesnt output the username at all, it does however output the UID, which still doesnt help because I need to link the UID to a username.

grial: ps -O will work, but i dont know what format I would need for my question.

Basically:

ps -ef

This gets me all the information I need except the username. Though it does return the users ID (UID). I need to know how I reference the username from the UID.


Thanks, Chris.

take a UID and scan/map from '/etc/passwd'

can you pls post the output of: ps -ef and ps -O both here?