WYNTK: UNIX System Admininistrator

Use grep with ps to see what a single person is doing.

On most systems with multiple users, the output from a ps -au command is screenfuls upon screenfuls. Usually, you’re only interested in a particular thing—such as, what is a particular user doing, or is anyone running a particular program right now?

On some systems, there may be a special option to ps for other users. Check your ps manpage. If there’s no such option on your system, then pipe the ps output through grep. For example, if I only want to know what frank is up to:

% ps -au | grep frank
frank    29887    176 p9 I    Oct 17  0:00 -sh (csh)
frank    29886    176 pa I    Oct 17  0:00 -sh (csh)
lmui     19574    236 s6 S    10:55   0:00 egrep frank

ps usually reports only the processes associated with a terminal. Not all processes are associated with a terminal. If you want to see all processes belonging to Frank, add the x command-line option:

Remember that everyone else can run ps, too

One lesson you should be learning is that whatever programs you run, others on the system might be able to see what you are doing. So if you’re playing a game when you’re on a team deadline, be aware that your supervisor or coworkers could find out, even if they aren’t standing over your shoulder.

% ps -aux | grep frank frank 29850 284 ? I Oct 17 0:02 /usr/vue/bin/vuesession frank 29887 176 p9 I Oct 17 0:00 -sh (csh) lmui 19761 236 s6 S 10:57 0:00 egrep frank frank 29885 360 ? S Oct 17 0:03 xload -name vueload -nol frank 29886 176 pa I Oct 17 0:00 -sh (csh) frank 29873 808 ...