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Show start time and runtime of a process

harmlessProcessesdebian, ubuntu
Adjust the values, the command updates live
user@server
ps -o pid,user,lstart,etime,cmd -p 1234

lstart prints the exact start time, etime the elapsed time in the format [[days-]hours:]minutes:seconds. This tells whether a PHP or backup process belongs to a current run or has been hanging for days. Multiple PIDs are separated by commas.

Note: ps -eo pid,etimes,cmd --sort=-etimes | head shows all processes sorted by runtime.

Also searched as

  • since when is this process running
  • how long has the process been running
  • process start time linux
  • is the script hanging for long

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Count processes per user

$ps -eo user= | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn
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Find zombie processes and their parent processes

$ps -eo pid,ppid,stat,cmd | awk 'NR == 1 || $3 ~ /^Z/'
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Show processes as a tree with parents and children

$ps -ef --forest
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Show processes with the highest CPU usage

$ps aux --sort=-%cpu | head -15
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Show processes with the highest RAM usage

$ps -eo pid,user,%mem,rss,cmd --sort=-rss | head -15
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Sum up RAM usage per program

$ps -eo rss=,comm= | awk '{a[$2]+=$1} END {for (p in a) printf "%8.1f MB %s\n", a[p]/1024, p}' | sort -rn | head -15
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