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Ant's
Asked: 2012-09-16 06:22:40 +0800 CST

How to find sleeping process in Ubuntu?

  • 772

Is there any way to find sleeping processes in Ubuntu?

I can see top can list out number of sleeping processes, but I want them to be listed with their name.

Are there any commands for that?

command-line

4 Answers

  1. Try this:

    ps o state,command axh | grep "^[SD]" | cut -b 3-

    for listing commands of processes with an interruptable and uninterruptable sleep state.

    • ps outputting only state and commands of all processes (ax) and h removes the header line.
    • grep filters processes other than the two sleep states
    • cut is used to remove the state output again.
    • Optionally replace command with ucmd if you don't need the full name including all arguments.

    This is probably suboptimal scripting here, but I couldn't find a quick way to have ps filtered for a specific state.

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  2. You could grab the information from top, which can be run in batch mode (-b).

    top -bn1 | awk 'NR > 7 && $8 ~ /S|D/ { print $12 }'
    • -n1 top runs only once and exits.
    • NR > 7 skips header.
    • $8 ~ /S|D/ selects programs which are in state D or S.

    Possible states are, from top(1):

          'D' = uninterruptible sleep
      'R' = running
      'S' = sleeping
      'T' = traced or stopped
      'Z' = zombie
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  3. ps -e S

    will show you sleeping processes.

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  4. Using awk and ps

    ps o pid,state,command | \
    awk ' {if ($2 == "T") {printf "%s\t%s\t%s\n","Sleeping",$1,$3};}'

    Example

    Start mc in a terminal, open a new terminal and start the commands below

    kill -STOP $(pgrep mc)
ps o pid,state,command | \
    awk ' {if ($2 == "T") {printf "%s\t%s\t%s\n","Sleeping",$1,$3};}'

    Output is

    Sleeping    21668   mc
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