List usernames instead of uids with the ps command for long usernames

Have your ever faced such a situation. You have usernames in your /etc/passwd file with more than 8 characters. This is no problem for Linux at all, usernames may be up to 32 characters long, only your ps output might look a little scrambled.

It shows you the uid instead of the username like in the following example:

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$ id
 
uid=20001(longuser01) gid=10002(oinstall) groups=10002(oinstall)
 
$ sleep 1000000 &
 
$ ps -ef | grep sleep | grep -v grep
 
20001    14069 11739  0 14:11 pts/0    00:00:00 sleep 1000000

 

But you want to see the username instead of the uid. The workaround is

  • Don’t use more than eight characters for your usernames  :-)
  • Or …. format your ps output the right way

You could use the following alias to get the job done.

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$ alias psx='export PS_FORMAT="user:12,pid,%cpu,%mem,vsz,rss,tty,stat,start,time,command"; ps ax'
 
$ psx | grep sleep | grep -v grep
 
longuser01 14069  0.0  58940 520 pts/0 S 14:11:50 sleep 1000000

 

Now it looks better.

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