4 ms·
The "aux" vs "ef" thing is a Berkeley vs. System V unix thing. SunOS wanted "aux", while Solaris wanted "-ef", iirc. Linux ps will do either. From the man pa
by smcameron 4y ago
The "aux" vs "ef" thing is a Berkeley vs. System V unix thing. SunOS wanted "aux", while Solaris wanted "-ef", iirc. Linux ps will do either. From the man page:
This version of ps accepts several kinds of options:
1 UNIX options, which may be grouped and must be preceded by a dash.
2 BSD options, which may be grouped and must not be used with a dash.
3 GNU long options, which are preceded by two dashes.
And:
Note that "ps -aux" is distinct from "ps aux". The POSIX and UNIX standards require that "ps -aux" print all processes owned by a user named "x", as well as printing all processes that would be selected by the -a option. If the user named "x" does not exist, this ps may interpret the command as "ps aux" instead and print a warning.
Edit: On my system, "ps -aux" does the same thing as "ps aux" and no warning is printed, despite the what the man page says. I'm not going to try to create a user named 'x' though.