pidin

Display information about the processes in the system (BlackBerry 10 OS)

Syntax:

pidin [options] [shorthand ...]

Options:

-d delay

The delay, in tenths of a second, to use when looping with the -l option. The default is 10.

-F formats

A combination of format codes, like the format string for printf() . Each code consists of a percent sign (%), an optional width for the field, and a format character (e.g., "%I %60N"). For more information, see " Format characters," below.

If you don't specify any format codes, the default is "%a %b %N %p %J %B".

-f formats

The same as the -F option, but the formats parameter is a contiguous string of format codes that gets expanded. For example, -f mbe is expanded to -F "%m %b %e".

-h

Display a brief usage message.

-k

Keep displaying data for PIDs and TIDs until an error occurs, for example, encountering a PID/TID in an unknown state (because the PID/TID is partially alive).

-l

Loop mode; display statistics every delay tenths of a second (specified with the -d option).

-M formats

A combination of format characters, each following a percent sign (%), like the format string for printf() , that controls the formatting of information about memory regions. For more information, see " Memory format characters," below.

-o prio

Run at prio priority.

-P pid

Show only the process family you're interested in (pid may be a name or number).

-p pid

Show only the process you're interested in (pid may be a name or number).

Note: If the pid for the -P or -p option is a number, it's interpreted as a process ID; otherwise, it's interpreted as a name. To avoid confusion, don't assign a numerical name to a process.

shorthand

A name that represents a certain combination of format codes or a special command:

arguments
backtrace
channels
environment
extsched
family
fds
flags
info
irqs
libs
mapinfo
memory
net
pmem
rc
regs
rmasks
sched
session
signals
syspage
threads
timers
times
tolerance
ttimes
users

You need to type only as many characters of the name as are required to uniquely identify it. For more information, see " Shorthand forms," below.

Description:

The pidin utility displays information about the processes running on a BlackBerry 10 OS system.

Note: This utility goes through all of the processes in the system, one by one, and retrieves state information for each; it doesn't get the system state in a single snapshot. Thus pidin's output reflects what was happening at the instant in time when it queried each process, so you might see some anomalies, suchs as more threads running than there are processors in the system.

By default, pidin displays the statistics once and then exits. If you specify the -l option, pidin loops forever, displaying statistics after the delay specified by the -d option.

If you specify the -l and -k options, pidin loops until a error occurs, displaying statistics after the given delay. The most common error encountered is a race condition: procnto indicates that a process exists, but the process is gone when pidin queries it.

Format characters

The format characters that you can specify with the -F or -f option include the following:

A

Display the arguments.

a

Display the process ID.

B

Display what you're blocked on; The output includes a Blocked column whose value depends on the thread's state:

State	Value
`CONDVAR`	Address of the condvar
`JOIN`	Thread ID of the blocking thread
`MUTEX`	The address of the mutex, or the IDs of the process and thread blocked on, followed by the number of times locked, in the form `pid` `-` `tid` `#` `times`
`RECEIVE`	ID of the channel within the process that the thread is blocked on
`REPLY`	Process ID^a
`SEM`	Address of the semaphore
`SEND`	Process ID^a
`STACK`	Stack size
`WAITPAGE`	Virtual address of the page
`WAITTHREAD`	Thread ID of the blocking thread

^a If the process is running on a remote node, the process ID is followed by @ and the node name.

b

Display the thread ID.

C

Display the process ID of one of the process's children. If you specify the G format, other children are listed as siblings of this child.

c

Display the code size of the process.

D

Display the process's debug flags:

Flag	Value	Meaning
_DEBUG_FLAG_STOPPED	`0x00000001`	The thread isn't running.
_DEBUG_FLAG_ISTOP	`0x00000002`	The thread is stopped at apoint of interest.
_DEBUG_FLAG_IPINVAL	`0x00000010`	The instruction pointer isn't valid.
_DEBUG_FLAG_ISSYS	`0x00000020`	System process.
_DEBUG_FLAG_SSTEP	`0x00000040`	Stopped because of single-stepping.
_DEBUG_FLAG_CURTID	`0x00000080`	The thread is the current thread.
_DEBUG_FLAG_TRACE_EXEC	`0x00000100`	Stopped because of a breakpoint.
_DEBUG_FLAG_TRACE_RD	`0x00000200`	Stopped because of read access.
_DEBUG_FLAG_TRACE_WR	`0x00000400`	Stopped because of write access.
_DEBUG_FLAG_TRACE_MODIFY	`0x00000800`	Stopped because of modified memory.
_DEBUG_FLAG_RLC	`0x00010000`	The Run-on-Last-Close flag is set.
_DEBUG_FLAG_KLC	`0x00020000`	The Kill-on-Last-Close flag is set.
_DEBUG_FLAG_FORK	`0x00040000`	The child inherits flags (stop on fork or spawn).

d

Display the data size of the process.

E

Display the environment.

e

Display the parent PID.

F

Show the threads' flags in hexadecimal, as follows:

Flag	Value	Meaning
_NTO_TF_INTR_PENDING	`0x00010000`	The thread has a pending interrupt
_NTO_TF_DETACHED	`0x00020000`	The thread is detached
_NTO_TF_THREADS_HOLD	`0x00100000`	Threads are being held
_NTO_TF_UNBLOCK_REQ	`0x00400000`	There's an unblock pending on the thread
_NTO_TF_ALIGN_FAULT	`0x01000000`	An alignment fault has occurred
_NTO_TF_SSTEP	`0x02000000`	Single-stepping is turned on
_NTO_TF_ALLOCED_STACK	`0x04000000`	Memory used in the stack isn't automatically returned to the system heap when the thread exits
_NTO_TF_NOMULTISIG	`0x08000000`	Signals don't terminate all threads in the process
_NTO_TF_FROZEN	`0x10000000`	The thread is frozen
_NTO_TF_IOPRIV	`0x80000000`	The thread has I/O privileges

f

Show the processes' flags in hexadecimal, as follows:

Flag	Value	Meaning
_NTO_PF_NOCLDSTOP	`0x00000001`	The process isn't sent a SIGCHILD signal when its children stop
_NTO_PF_LOADING	`0x00000002`	The process hasn't been fully loaded
_NTO_PF_TERMING	`0x00000004`	The process is terminating
_NTO_PF_ZOMBIE	`0x00000008`	The process is a zombie
_NTO_PF_NOZOMBIE	`0x00000010`	The process won't become a zombie on its death
_NTO_PF_FORKED	`0x00000020`	The process is a child by way of exec()
_NTO_PF_ORPHAN_PGRP	`0x00000040`	The process is an orphan
_NTO_PF_STOPPED	`0x00000080`	The process has been stopped
_NTO_PF_DEBUG_STOPPED	`0x00000100`	The process has been stopped by the debugger
_NTO_PF_BKGND_PGRP	`0x00000200`	The process is running in the background
_NTO_PF_NO_LIMITS	`0x00000400`	The process has no limits on its resources
_NTO_PF_CONTINUED	`0x00000800`	The process was stopped, but has now been made to continue
_NTO_PF_CHECK_INTR	`0x00001000`	The process is attached to some interrupts
_NTO_PF_COREDUMP	`0x00002000`	The process has written a coredump file
_NTO_PF_PTRACED	`0x00004000`	The process is being traced
_NTO_PF_RING0	`0x00008000`	The process is running in a privileged supervisor state (known as "ring 0" in some architectures)
_NTO_PF_SLEADER	`0x00010000`	The process is a session leader
_NTO_PF_WAITINFO	`0x00020000`	The process will produce wait information when it terminates
_NTO_PF_VFORKED	`0x00040000`	The process was created with vfork()
_NTO_PF_DESTROYALL	`0x00080000`	The process is being destroyed
_NTO_PF_NOCOREDUMP	`0x00100000`	The process is not permitted to create core files
_NTO_PF_NOCTTY	`0x00200000`	The process doesn't have a controlling TTY
_NTO_PF_THREADWATCH	`0x80000000`	Not currently used

G

Display the process ID of one of the process's siblings. If you specify the C format, pidin displays the process ID of one of each process's children. You can use the child and sibling information to determine a process's children.

H

Display the scheduling-specific information for each thread.

h

Display the thread name; if a thread doesn't have a name, pidin displays the thread's ID (tid) instead.

I

Display the PID and TID, joined by a hyphen.

i

Display the runmask and inherit mask. For more information, see the Multicore Processing User's Guide.

J

Display the state of the thread; see " Thread life cycle " in the QNX Neutrino Microkernel chapter of the System Architecture guide

K

Display the last kernel call that was executed.

L

Display the session ID.

l

("el") Display the last CPU that the thread ran on.

M

Display the memory owned by the PID.

m

Display the stack size of the process. A * next to a stack size indicates that memory used in the stack isn't automatically returned to the system heap when the thread exits. The memory is returned when the process exits.

N

Display the short name of the process.

n

Display the long name of the process.

O

Display the loaded shared libraries.

o

Display the connection IDs and file descriptors associated with the process. If you don't have permission to access them, pidin provides only limited information.

The information for each connection and file descriptor includes the following:

the file descriptor, followed by s if it's a side channel
the ID of the process the connection is to
open flags (r or -, followed by w or -), or MP for a mountpoint
the offset
the name of the file or device, if available.

P

(Uppercase "P") Display the parent group.

p

(Lowercase "p") Display the thread priority. The letter following the scheduling priority number stands for the scheduling policy used, as follows:

f — FIFO scheduling
r — round-robin scheduling
o — other (currently the same as round-robin scheduling)
s — sporadic scheduling

For more information on these scheduling policies, see Thread scheduling in the System Architecture guide.

Q

Display the interrupt handlers. For each handler, pidin shows:

the interrupt ID returned by InterruptAttach() or InterruptAttachEvent()
the interrupt vector passed to InterruptAttach() or InterruptAttachEvent()
the mask level count
the interrupt flags. Valid flags include:
- T—_NTO_INTR_FLAGS_TRK_MSK
- P—_NTO_INTR_FLAGS_PROCESS
- E—_NTO_INTR_FLAGS_END
the address of the interrupt handler and the interrupt handler area, separated by a colon
a description of the sigevent to be delivered. Valid descriptions include:
- SIGNAL signo
- SIGNAL_CODE signo code:value
- SIGNAL_THREAD signo code:value
- PULSE coid:priority code:value<
- UNBLOCK
- INTR
- THREAD code:value

q

Display the backtrace of the addresses of calling routines. For best results, use this format with the I format (as in the backtrace shorthand form).

R

Display information about the timers:

the timer ID returned by TimerCreate()
the thread ID associated with this timer (0 for the entire process)
the number of overruns
the type of clock used:
- REAL — CLOCK_REALTIME
- SOFT — CLOCK_SOFTTIME
- MONO — CLOCK_MONOTONIC
the timer flags:
- X — _NTO_TI_EXPIRED
- A — _NTO_TI_ABSOLUTE
- a — _NTO_TI_ACTIVE
- P — _NTO_TI_PRECISE
the time left before expiry, in microseconds, followed by a slash (/), and then by the timer interval, in microseconds
the timer tolerance, in microseconds, or INF for infinitely tolerant timers
the description of the sigevent to be delivered when the timer expires:
- SIGNAL signo
- SIGNAL_CODE signo code:value
- SIGNAL_THREAD signo code:value
- PULSE coid:priority code:value<
- UNBLOCK
- INTR
- THREAD code:value

r

Show the values of the registers.

S

Display the signal-ignore mask.

s

Display the signal-queued mask.

T

Display the number of threads.

t

Display the time at which the process was started.

U

Display the process's user ID, as a number.

u

Display the number of nanoseconds spent running in user space.

V

Display the process's group ID, as a number.

v

Display the number of nanoseconds spent running in system space.

W

Display the process's effective user ID, as a number.

w

Display the number of nanoseconds that the process's terminated children spent running in user space.

X

Display the process's effective group ID, as a number.

x

Display the number of nanoseconds that the process's terminated children spent running in system space.

Y

Display the process's set user ID, as a number.

y

Display the time at which the thread was started.

Z

Display the process's set group ID, as a number.

z

Display the number of nanoseconds that the thread spent running in user and system space.

[

Display the lengths of the send, receive, reply and pulse queues.

\

Display the process's supplementary group IDs.

]

Display the process's application ID.

^

Display the process's default timer tolerance in nanoseconds, or infinite if the timers are infinitely tolerant.

Memory format characters

The memory format characters that you can specify with the -M options include the following:

<

Display the memory object's code size.

=

Display the memory object's data size.

>

Display the memory object's address.

?

Display the memory object's offset.

M

Display the memory owned by the process.

: (colon)

Display the memory object's name, or Mapped Phys Memory for mapped physical memory.

; (semicolon)

Display the offset that was used in the mmap() call when physical memory was mapped.

@

Display the memory object's flags, which can include:

ANON — MAP_PRIVATE, MAP_ANON
E — MAP_ELF
F — MAP_FIXED
P — MAP_PRIVATE
S — MAP_SHARED

For more information about these flags, see the entry for mmap() in the BlackBerry 10 OS Library Reference.

Shorthand forms

Each shorthand form represents a certain combination of format codes or a special command. You need to type only as many characters of the name as are required to uniquely identify it. The shorthand forms include the following:

arguments (equivalent to -F "%a %A")

Show the arguments of the displayed processes.

backtrace (equivalent to -F "%I %q")

Display backtrace information for each thread in the displayed processes. For example:

$ pidin -p devc-con-hid back
pid-tid     backtrace
    4103-01 b033ab5b:b03323cb:b03324f3:804f6ed:804c120:804a285
    4103-02 b033af63:805ca60:b031f0ad

The output includes the process ID hyphenated to the thread ID, followed by a backtrace of the addresses of the calling routines.

channels (equivalent to -F "%a %b %N %[")

Display the lengths of the send, receive, reply and pulse queues.

This shorthand is useful if you're trying to track pulse leaks—that is, a process not receiving pulses. This can cause a growth in kernel memory usage, since pulse structures are allocated in the kernel.

environment (equivalent to -F "%a %N %E")

Show the environment of the displayed processes.

extsched

Display details of the active extended scheduler configuration.

family (equivalent to -F "%a %N %L %P %e %G %C")

Show the sessions, process groups, parents, siblings, and children of the displayed processes.

fds (equivalent to -F "%a %N %o")

Show information about the process's connections and file descriptors.

flags (equivalent to -F "%a %N %f")

Show the processes' flags in hexadecimal.

info

Display information about the system, such as the type of processor(s) and the amount of free memory.

irqs (equivalent to -F "%a %b %N %Q")

Show the IRQ handlers owned by the process.

libs (equivalent to -F "%a %N %O")

Show the shared libraries loaded by the process.

mapinfo (equivalent to -F "%a %b %N %p %J %c %d %m" -M " %: @%> %; %< %= %@")

Show information about memory mappings.

The output looks like this:

4101   8 proc/boot/io-usb    10o RECEIVE           80K  424K   4096(20K)
         libc.so.3          @b0300000             452K   16K
         devu-uhci.so       @b8200000              24K  4096
         devu-ohci.so       @b8207000              24K  4096
         devu-ehci.so       @b820e000              28K  4096
         Mapped Phys Memory @40100000 (ee000000)         12K  S

It includes:

the memory object's name, or Mapped Phys Memory for mapped physical memory
the memory object's address, followed by the offset if applicable
the object's code and data sizes
the memory object's flags

memory (equivalent to -F "%a %b %N %p %J %c %d %m" -M " %M @%> %? %< %=")

Show the memory used by the displayed processes; pidin displays the shared memory regions, including shared objects, and stack usage for each thread. Shared code and data regions are removed from the size of the process.

The stack numbers represent the amount of stack currently mapped and, in brackets, the maximum allowed for that process.

A * next to a stack size indicates that memory used in the stack isn't automatically returned to the system heap when the thread exits. The memory is returned when the process exits.

Entries for /dev/mem indicate shared memory that's mapped into the process address space. For example:

/dev/mem           @38100000 (       0)        172K

If the entries for different processes show the same object (@38100000 in this example), they all reference the same shared memory object. The processes can map that shared memory differently; the number in parentheses is the offset that was used in the mmap() call, and the last number is the size of the mapping.

If a shared object that contains text relocations is remapped as private, pidin mem displays an exclamation mark (!) beside the name.

net

Display system information about all the nodes on the Qnet network.

pmem (equivalent to -F "%a %b %N %p %J %c %d %m")

Display process memory only.

rc

Show the process name and arguments of all remote nodes connected to your machine.

regs (equivalent to -F "%a %b %N %r")

Show the values of the registers.

rmasks (equivalent to -F "%a %b %N %i")

Display runmasks and inherit masks.

sched (equivalent to -F "%a %b %N %p %l %H %J")

Display useful scheduling parameters for each thread.

session (equivalent to -F "%L %a %P %e %N")

Sort by session ID, then process ID. By default, pidin sorts the output by process ID.

signals (equivalent to -F "%a %b %N %S %s")

Show the signal state of the displayed processes.

syspage

Show the syspage entry. You can specify which section to print by indicating a name (e.g. the command pidin syspage=asinfo displays the asinfo section). The default is all.

For example, if you want to find out how much space the image file system (IFS) occupies in the memory, run the following command:

pidin syspage=asinfo

and look for the lines with imagefs. See the output in the display as shown in the "Examples:" section below.

threads (equivalent to -F "%a %N %h %J %B")

Show the thread name; if a thread doesn't have a name, pidin displays the thread's ID (tid) instead.

timers (equivalent to -F "%a %b %N %R")

Show the timers owned by the process.

times (equivalent to -F "%a %N %L %t %u %v %w %x")

Display times for the process.

For each process displayed, show:

start time—the time and date that the process was started
utime—the number of CPU seconds consumed by the process
stime—the number of CPU seconds consumed by the kernel on behalf of the process
cutime—the number of CPU seconds consumed by the children of the process
cstime—the number of CPU seconds consumed by the kernel on behalf of the children of the process

The times for the child processes are added to cutime and cstime only after the children terminate.

Note: CPU usage is calculated by sampling. When the timer interrupt occurs, the kernel determines which process is running, and adds the time to the total running times of the active thread and its process. If the kernel itself is active, it also adds the time to the system times (stime) of the active thread and its process. The utime is the total running time minus the system time.

As a result, these times are approximate, and can be inaccurate (e.g., if a process is driven by the timer interrupt). To determine more accurate times, use the system profiler.

tolerance (equivalent to -F "%a %N %^")

Show the process's default timer tolerance.

ttimes (equivalent to -F "%a %b %N %J %t %y %z")

Show thread times.

users (equivalent to -F "%a %N %U %V %W %X %Y %Z %\\")

Display the real, effective, and saved user IDs and group IDs, and the supplemental group IDs for the user who launched the processes.

This option doesn't display the users' or groups' names, just the numerical IDs.

Examples:

The pidin command prints a listing similar to this:

     pid tid name               prio STATE       Blocked
       1   1 /sys/procnto-instr   0f READY
       1   3 /sys/procnto-instr  10r RUNNING
       1   4 /sys/procnto-instr  12r RECEIVE     1
       1   5 /sys/procnto-instr  12r RECEIVE     1
       1   6 /sys/procnto-instr  12r RECEIVE     1
       1  11 /sys/procnto-instr  12r RECEIVE     1
       1  12 /sys/procnto-instr  10r RECEIVE     1
       1  13 /sys/procnto-instr  10r RECEIVE     1
       1  15 /sys/procnto-instr 255r RECEIVE     1
       1  16 /sys/procnto-instr  10r RECEIVE     1
       1  17 /sys/procnto-instr  10r RECEIVE     1
       2   1 sbin/tinit          10o REPLY       1
       3   1 proc/boot/slogger   10o RECEIVE     1
       5   1 proc/boot/pci-bios  10o RECEIVE     1
       6   1 roc/boot/devb-eide  10o SIGWAITINFO
       6   2 roc/boot/devb-eide  21r RECEIVE     1
       ...

Using pidin -F "%I %60N" displays the PID and TID, along with up to 60 characters of the processes' short name:

pid-tid     name
       1-01 rldbuild/cdr/qnx6/tmp/target/qnx6/x86/boot/sys/procnto-instr
       1-03 rldbuild/cdr/qnx6/tmp/target/qnx6/x86/boot/sys/procnto-instr
       1-04 rldbuild/cdr/qnx6/tmp/target/qnx6/x86/boot/sys/procnto-instr
       1-05 rldbuild/cdr/qnx6/tmp/target/qnx6/x86/boot/sys/procnto-instr
       1-06 rldbuild/cdr/qnx6/tmp/target/qnx6/x86/boot/sys/procnto-instr
       1-11 rldbuild/cdr/qnx6/tmp/target/qnx6/x86/boot/sys/procnto-instr
       1-12 rldbuild/cdr/qnx6/tmp/target/qnx6/x86/boot/sys/procnto-instr
       1-13 rldbuild/cdr/qnx6/tmp/target/qnx6/x86/boot/sys/procnto-instr
       1-15 rldbuild/cdr/qnx6/tmp/target/qnx6/x86/boot/sys/procnto-instr
       1-16 rldbuild/cdr/qnx6/tmp/target/qnx6/x86/boot/sys/procnto-instr
       1-17 rldbuild/cdr/qnx6/tmp/target/qnx6/x86/boot/sys/procnto-instr
       2-01 sbin/tinit
       3-01 proc/boot/slogger
       5-01 proc/boot/pci-bios
       6-01 proc/boot/devb-eide
       ...

The pidin mem command displays:

     pid tid name               prio STATE           code  data         stack
       1   1 /sys/procnto-instr   0f READY           1812K   12K      0(320)*
       1   3 /sys/procnto-instr  10r RUNNING         1812K   12K     0(8192)
       1   4 /sys/procnto-instr  12r RECEIVE         1812K   12K     0(8192)
       1   5 /sys/procnto-instr  12r RECEIVE         1812K   12K     0(8192)
       1   6 /sys/procnto-instr  12r RECEIVE         1812K   12K     0(8192)
       1  11 /sys/procnto-instr  12r RECEIVE         1812K   12K     0(8192)
       1  12 /sys/procnto-instr  10r RECEIVE         1812K   12K     0(8192)
       1  13 /sys/procnto-instr  10r RECEIVE         1812K   12K     0(8192)
       1  15 /sys/procnto-instr 255r RECEIVE         1812K   12K     0(8192)
       1  16 /sys/procnto-instr  10r RECEIVE         1812K   12K     0(8192)
       1  17 /sys/procnto-instr  10r RECEIVE         1812K   12K     0(8192)
            procnto-instr      @cfbe5000              12K   12K
       2   1 sbin/tinit          10o REPLY            8192   36K  4096(516K)*
            ldqnx.so.2         @b0300000             344K   16K
       3   1 proc/boot/slogger   10o RECEIVE          8192  104K  4096(516K)*
            ldqnx.so.2         @b0300000             344K   16K
       5   1 proc/boot/pci-bios  10o RECEIVE           36K   40K  8192(516K)*
            ldqnx.so.2         @b0300000             344K   16K
       6   1 roc/boot/devb-eide  10o SIGWAITINFO       52K   91M  8192(516K)*
       6   2 roc/boot/devb-eide  21r RECEIVE           52K   91M   4096(12K)
       ...

The pidin syspage=asinfo command displays:

Section:asinfo offset:0x00000568 size:0x00000240
    0)                0-ffff             o:ffff a:0000 p:100 n:io
   20)                0-ffffffff         o:ffff a:0010 p:100 n:memory
   40)                0-ffffff           o:0020 a:0010 p:100 n:memory/isa
   a0)                0-9fbff            o:0040 a:0017 p:100 n:memory/isa/ram
  180)             1000-cfff             o:00a0 a:0007 p:100 n:memory/isa/ram/sysram
  1a0)            20f98-9fbff            o:00a0 a:0007 p:100 n:memory/isa/ram/sysram
   c0)           100000-ffffff           o:0040 a:0037 p:100 n:memory/isa/ram
  1c0)           100000-40e507           o:00c0 a:0007 p:100 n:memory/isa/ram/sysram
  1e0)           5e533c-ffffff           o:00c0 a:0027 p:100 n:memory/isa/ram/sysram
   60)          6000000-ffefffff         o:0020 a:0013 p:100 n:memory/device
  100)          6000000-ffeafff          o:0060 a:0017 p:100 n:memory/device/ram
  220)          6000000-ffeafff          o:0100 a:0007 p:100 n:memory/device/ram/sysram
   80)         fff00000-ffffffff         o:0020 a:0005 p:100 n:memory/rom
   e0)          1000000-5ffffff          o:0020 a:0037 p:100 n:memory/ram
  200)          1000000-5ffffff          o:00e0 a:0027 p:100 n:memory/ram/sysram
  120)           40e508-5e533b           o:0020 a:0005 p:100 n:memory/imagefs
  140)           400400-40e507           o:0020 a:0007 p:100 n:memory/startup
  160)           40e508-5e533b           o:0020 a:0007 p:100 n:memory/bootram