81

When a script is launched from command prompt the shell will spawn a subprocess for that script. I want to show that relationship between terminal level process and its children using ps in a tree style output.
How can I do this?

What I have tried so far

file: script.sh

#!/bin/bash

ps -f -p$1

Then I invoke the script from the command line passing in the process id of the terminal shell:

$ ./script.sh $$

What I want is something like this

  • top level (terminal) shell process
  • ./script.sh
  • process for ps command itself 
USER    PID  [..]
ubuntu 123     -bash
ubuntu 1234    \_ bash ./script.sh
ubuntu 12345      \_ ps auxf

what Im getting is:

  PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
14492 pts/24   Ss     0:00 -bash
the_velour_fog
  • 12,270
  • 3
    Why not use pstree? – muru Feb 20 '16 at 09:50
  • @muru I tried pstree and couldn't get it to produce meaningful output, I think pstree $$ just produced bash--pstree not exactly what I was looking for. – the_velour_fog Feb 20 '16 at 09:53
  • How is it not what you're looking for? You have replaced the script and ps, so what else do you expect to see except for pstree? – muru Feb 20 '16 at 09:55
  • @muru your right its technically what I wanted, but too minimal. i.e. how do you know for sure which processes you are looking at without a PID like ps shows it it table output? – the_velour_fog Feb 20 '16 at 10:03
  • 6
    pstree -p $$? Or, if you want more of the command line show, pstree -pa $$. Or, if you want to show all parent processes going up, pstree -psa $$. – muru Feb 20 '16 at 10:04
  • show tree graph start from pid 1: pstree -alp 1 – Iceberg Feb 01 '21 at 16:31

5 Answers5

103

Try the --forest (or -H) flag

# ps -ef --forest
root     114032   1170  0 Apr05 ?        00:00:00  \_ sshd: root@pts/4
root     114039 114032  0 Apr05 pts/4    00:00:00  |   \_ -bash
root      56225 114039  0 13:47 pts/4    00:00:16  |       \_ top
root     114034   1170  0 Apr05 ?        00:00:00  \_ sshd: root@notty
root     114036 114034  0 Apr05 ?        00:00:00  |   \_ /usr/libexec/openssh/sftp-server
root     103102   1170  0 Apr06 ?        00:00:03  \_ sshd: root@pts/0
root     103155 103102  0 Apr06 pts/0    00:00:00  |   \_ -bash
root     106798 103155  0 Apr06 pts/0    00:00:00  |       \_ su - postgres
postgres 106799 106798  0 Apr06 pts/0    00:00:00  |           \_ -bash
postgres  60959 106799  0 14:39 pts/0    00:00:00  |               \_ ps -aef --forest
postgres  60960 106799  0 14:39 pts/0    00:00:00  |               \_ more
rustyx
  • 319
GILBERTO LINS
  • 1,139
  • 10
    The question implied looking for a process tree starting at a specific process, taking $1 argument to a script or using $$ to look at the tree starting at the current shell... Can you update your answer to include information on how to get a forest starting at a specific process? – filbranden Apr 09 '18 at 18:42
44

I found it after reading this superuser answer, noting this comment

But not for a PID (-p) because it prints only the specific process, but for the session (-g)

and experimenting 

ps f -g<PID>

result

$ ./script.sh $$
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
14492 pts/24   Ss     0:00 -bash
 9906 pts/24   S+     0:00  \_ bash ./script.sh 14492
 9907 pts/24   R+     0:00      \_ ps f -g14492
Community
  • 1
the_velour_fog
  • 12,270
  • 6
    from the man page: OUTPUT MODIFIERS: f ASCII-art process hierarchy (forest) – phyatt Feb 16 '17 at 15:33
  • 1
    man page: -g grplist: Select by session OR by effective group name. How does providing a PID result in selection by session? – user650654 Jan 31 '22 at 23:45
6

Try this:

 $ ps -afx
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
    2 ?        S      0:00 [kthreadd]
    4 ?        I<     0:00  \_ [kworker/0:0H]
    6 ?        I<     0:00  \_ [mm_percpu_wq]
    7 ?        S      0:14  \_ [ksoftirqd/0]
    8 ?        I      0:34  \_ [rcu_sched]
    9 ?        I      0:00  \_ [rcu_bh]
   10 ?        S      0:00  \_ [migration/0]
   11 ?        S      0:00  \_ [watchdog/0]
sluge
  • 269
4

You can use the command ps f -g <PID> and stat the root process for PID:

#> ps f -g 0

PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
2 ?        S      0:00 [kthreadd]
3 ?        S      0:01  \_ [ksoftirqd/0]
7 ?        S      0:19  \_ [rcu_sched]
perror
  • 3,239
  • 7
  • 33
  • 45
Richard J.
  • 41
0

This works for me the best if you only care about your own processes. Have fun. 

ps fx | perl -ne "print if /^s*$$/.."'/^\s*$$/'
solotim
  • 101