ps auxx code example

Example: what does ps aux mean

$ ps aux  

USER       PID  %CPU %MEM  VSZ RSS     TTY   STAT START   TIME COMMAND
timothy  29217  0.0  0.0 11916 4560 pts/21   S+   08:15   0:00 pine  
root     29505  0.0  0.0 38196 2728 ?        Ss   Mar07   0:00 sshd: can [priv]   
can      29529  0.0  0.0 38332 1904 ?        S    Mar07   0:00 sshd: can@notty  

# USER = user owning the process
# PID = process ID of the process
# %CPU = It is the CPU time used divided by the time the process has been running.
# %MEM = ratio of the process’s resident set size to the physical memory on the machine
# VSZ = virtual memory usage of entire process (in KiB)
# RSS = resident set size, the non-swapped physical memory that a task has used (in KiB)
# TTY = controlling tty (terminal)
# STAT = multi-character process state
# START = starting time or date of the process
# TIME = cumulative CPU time
# COMMAND = command with all its arguments

# See the ps man page for more info.
# https://web.archive.org/web/20150702131123/http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?ps