Process info

If you look in ps for a process, you will usually see the characters S or R… and sometimes others. But what do they mean?

The kernel contains something called a run queue. When a process is ready to run, it tells the kernel that it needs some cycles from the CPU. Once it does this, it is said to be “in the run queue”. It’s status at this point is runnable, or R.

When the process is not waiting in the run queue, for example, when it is waiting on input or doing something else that does not require processing time from the CPU, it is said to be in “stopped” state, or S.

D state is particularly annoying. It means “uninterruptible IO wait”. This means that the process is stuck in a system call waiting for some IO. When it is in this state, you cannot do anything with the process, not even send a signal (the signals are queued up waiting for the process to leave D state). There are only two ways out of this state - either fix the condition that is causing it (it’s usually NFS related), or reboot the system. There are no other options.

T state, as I mentioned previously, means the process is stopped. You will need to send a SIGCONT to start the process again.

Z means the process is defunct. Either kill the parent, reboot the box, or live with it. This is actually fairly harmless, except that it takes up space in the process table.

There are some other values as well. You can “man ps” to find outwhat they are (look under PROCESS STATE CODES). You’ll find the output of ps to be much more informative than you thought, once you know how to read it.