Sorting results of ps by start time

Question

I'm displaying information about the current processes using this variety of the ps command:

ps -eo pid,start,stime,command

How can I sort these results by start?

I've read man ps and tried -m, -r and -v sorting options. Unfortunately I haven't been able to use these options to sort by start.

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 16 '14 at 18:18

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You use etime. That's elapsed time, in days, hours, etc. which is suitable for sorting numerically. If it's the first column, I think ps will sort by it automatically.

Otherwise, you can override sort order by using --sort, but make sure it is after the -o option, example:

ps -o pid,user:32,start,etime,state,time,vsz,args --sort=etime

edited Jan 16 '14 at 18:18

Jeff Bauer

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answered Dec 01 '11 at 00:36

Bobby Jack

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weird - guess it's coincidental for me, since I'm running on a recently-booted machine. Just pipe to sort -n, then. – Bobby Jack Dec 01 '11 at 00:39
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@MrMusic: not for uptime > 24 hours – Bobby Jack Dec 01 '11 at 00:49
@BobbyJack good point. In my case I'm interested in differentiating processes started within the last hour or so from days or months ago. – SundayMonday Dec 01 '11 at 00:56

Sorting results of ps by start time

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