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Dean Smith
Asked: 2009-06-19 01:16:37 +0800 CST

How to sort ps output by process start time?

  • 772

Is there a way to sort ps output by process start time, so newest are either at the top or bottom ?

On Linux ?

On SysV5 ?

On Mac ?

linux mac-osx unix command-line-interface process

7 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    This should work on Linux and SysV5

    ps -ef --sort=start_time
    • 120

  2. Linux:

    $ ps aux --sort=lstart

    OSX:

    $ ps aux -O started
    • 12

  3. Along with the great answers above, sometimes I just want to see the top 20 offenders by process sorted descending by time, cpu% and memory usage.

    For that I use:

    ps auxww --sort=lstart | sort -r -k3,4 | head -20

    This would be on a CentOS platform, though I've enjoyed the same results on Fedora as well.

    Oh and for grins, I sometimes want to remove a set of processes, so I simply use a variant on the above that includes a bit of grep -v action, such as:

    ps auxww --sort=lstart | sort -r -k3,4 | grep -v "sbin/httpd" | head -20
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  4. I can't comment yet, but to answer the question about how to reverse the order of a time sort, just put a minus sign (-) in front of the field.
    Example: ps -elf --sort=-start_time

    • 4

  5. Or try 'ls', as it allows time formats that are easy to sort, and easier to use.

    ( cd /proc; ls -td --full-time --time-style=+%s [0123456789]*; )

    Outputs the date/time in epoch, newest procs at the top.

    • 2

  6. Try simple command:

    ps | sort -k7 -n

    -k7 for the time column and -n for numeric.

    Example

    • 1

  7. I know it's obsolete syntax, but I find it practical for brevity:

    ps OT <other_options>

    For example:

    ps OT ax
    • 0