---
name: "px"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "px"
version: "3.6.9-1"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/px"
---

# px(1)

list running processes and show process metadata

## NAME

**px** – list running processes and show process metadata

## SYNOPSIS

**px** \[**--debug**\]  **px** \[**--debug**\] *filter* **px** \[**--debug**\] *PID*

## DESCRIPTION

The **px** utility lists processes running on the system, to the standard output. If stdout is a terminal, output will be truncated at terminal window width.

Without any arguments, **px** lists all processes on the system.

If you specify a *filter* the output will contain only processes matching that filter.

The *filter* can be a user name or part of a command line. For example, ‘px java’ will list all Java processes, and ‘px root’ will list all of root's processes.

Running **px** *PID* will show you information about a given process:

- The process tree; parents and children

- Start time, run time and CPU usage

- List of other processes started around the same time as this one

- List of users logged in when the process was started

- Where stdin, stdout and stderr is pointing

- Network connections

- IPC connections (sockets, pipes and local network connections) and which processes are at the other end of those

## PROCESS NAMING

**px** tries to be helpful about naming processes, and avoid printing names of various VMs.

For example, if you do ‘java -jar foo.jar’, **px** will show this process as ‘foo.jar’ rather than ‘java’.

**px** parses command lines from:

- Java

- Python

- Node

- Ruby

- Various shells

- Perl

## SEE ALSO

[ptop(1)](/ptop/1.md), [pxtree(1)](/pxtree/1.md)

## HOMEPAGE

**px** lives at http://github.com/walles/px