What exactly is doing ps -aux in terminal?

Question

Command ps statically lists all processes. What exactly is doing -aux option?

a - all processes

u - user

x - execute

Something more?

Answer 1

I found a nice explanation here: http://www.linfo.org/ps.html

A common and convenient way of using ps to obtain much more complete information about the processes currently on the system is to use the following:

ps -aux | less

The -a option tells ps to list the processes of all users on the system rather than just those of the current user, with the exception of group leaders and processes not associated with a terminal. A group leader is the first member of a group of related processes.

The -u option tells ps to provide detailed information about each process. The -x option adds to the list processes that have no controlling terminal, such as daemons, which are programs that are launched during booting (i.e., computer startup) and run unobtrusively in the background until they are activated by a particular event or condition.