prints certain indicia about active
flag asks for information about all processes with typewriters (ordinarily
only one's own processes are displayed);
asks even about processes with no typewriter;
Ordinarily only the typewriter number (if not one's own),
and an approximation to the command line are given.
postmortem system debugging.
If a second argument is given,
it is taken to be the file containing the system's namelist.
The long listing is columnar and contains
The name of the process's control typewriter.
Flags associated with the process.
04: locked in code (e.g. for physical I/O);
20: being traced by another process.
The state of the process.
The user ID of the process owner.
The process ID of the process; as in certain cults it is possible to kill a process
if you know its true name.
process; high numbers mean low priority.
The size in blocks of the core image of the process.
The event for which the process is waiting or sleeping;
if blank, the process is running.
The command and its arguments.
makes an educated guess as to the file name
and arguments given when the process was created
by examining core memory or the swap area.
The method is inherently somewhat unreliable and in any event
a process is entitled to destroy this information,
so the names cannot be counted on too much.
/usr/sys/core alternate core file
/dev searched to find swap device and typewriter names