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When running ps with the -f option in PuTTY (to see the command corresponding to each process), lines which are longer than the terminal width are not fully visible (they are not wrapped on multiple lines).
How can I force line wrapping so that I can see the full commands (on multiple lines, if necessary) when running ps -f?
If you have a POSIX-conforming ps implementation, you may try
ps -f | more
Note that we¹ recently changed the behavior and if you have an implementation that follows POSIX issue 7 tc2, you may try:
ps -wwf | more
¹ We being the people who have weekly teleconferences to discuss the evolvement of the POSIX standard.
ps -f), but others may prefer having aux in there as well, as in fibonacci's answer.
Nov 2, 2022 at 12:07
For simplicity, try this:
ps auxfww
PowerShell and not on a putty or ssh terminal.
Oct 19, 2022 at 12:47
I've probably found the answer for your question on Stack Overflow. In the words of Dennis Williamson:
It is likely that you're using a pager such as less or most since the output of ps aux is longer than a screenful. If so, the following options will cause (or force) long lines to wrap instead of being truncated.
ps aux | less -+S
ps aux | most -wIf you use either of the following commands, lines won't be wrapped but you can use your arrow keys or other movement keys to scroll left and right.
ps aux | less -S# use arrow keys, or Esc+( and Esc+), or Alt+( and Alt+)
ps aux | most# use arrow keys, or < and > (Tab can also be used to scroll right) Lines are always wrapped for more and pg.When
ps auxis used in a pipe, the w option is unnecessary since ps only uses screen width when output is to the terminal.
(Note: this applies to non-embedded Linux, the ps utility on other Unix variants may work differently.)
/usr/ucb/ps and even with this program you would need ww as /usr/ucb/ps limits the output width to 80 if the output is a pipe. For the POSIX standard ps, see my answer.
ps command on non-embedded Linux, which is what a majority of readers here have.
Sep 14, 2015 at 20:57
There is also another simple solution:
echo "$(ps afx)"
When run in a command substitution like this, ps isn’t sending its output to a terminal, so it doesn’t limit its output to the terminal’s width.
BSD) and Ubuntu (Linux). Linux isn't showing any difference in when u echo or not. But, MAC OS X is printing as much as the terminal can show. I'm using iTerm2 and zsh. MAC doesn't allow the --f option.
The command for MacOS is slightly different
echo "$(ps aux)"
echo unnecessarily. Notice also that several other answers already mention ps aux in some way. I would suggest comments or edits on those existing answers to point out that they're good for MacOS (which is what I assume you meant).
Or you could do
IFS='$';for line in $(ps axf); do echo $line; done
