pstree

Introduction

pstree is a small program that shows the process listing (ps) as a tree (as the name implies...). It has several options to make selection criteria and to change the output style.

It should compile under most Un*xes, tested are AIX, Linux, HP-UX, A/UX, SunOS, Solaris, (Free|Open|Net)BSD, MacOSX/Darwin/macOS, and many others.

Under AIX & Linux, pstree directly reads the process table using getproc()/getuser() or the /proc file system. Under all other Un*xes, pstree reads the output of /bin/ps.

Compilation

Take an ANSI C compiler, e.g., gcc, and just enter

$ [g]cc -O -o pstree pstree.c

Alternatively, enter make.

Installation

Put the binary pstree into appropriate bindir, e.g., /usr/local/bin.

Optionally, put the manpage pstree.1 to, e.g., /usr/local/share/man/man1.

Changes

For changes up to v2.40, see end of pstree.c.

Usage

$ ./pstree -?
pstree $Revision: 2.40 $ by Fred Hucht (C) 1992-2022
EMail: fred AT thp.uni-due.de

Usage: pstree [-f file] [-g n] [-l n] [-u user] [-U] [-s string] [-p pid] [-w] [pid ...]
   -f file   read input from <file> (- is stdin) instead of running
             "ps -eo uid,pid,ppid,pgid,args"
   -g n      use graphics chars for tree. n=1: IBM-850, n=2: VT100, n=3: UTF-8
   -l n      print tree to n level deep
   -u user   show only branches containing processes of <user>
   -U        don't show branches containing only root processes
   -s string show only branches containing process with <string> in commandline
   -p pid    show only branches containing process <pid>
   -w        wide output, not truncated to window width
   pid ...   process ids to start from, default is 1 (probably init)

Process group leaders are marked with '='.

History

pstree started as a shell script back in the 90s, the first C version is from 1992. Since 1994, the source was managed using RCS. Since 2022, it lives here on GitHub.

pstree was formerly available under

ftp://ftp.thp.uni-due.de/pub/source/ (server down)
http://www.thp.uni-due.de/pstree/ (server down)

Have fun, Fred

Pstree

Install / Use

README