the command ps and how to get all the flags thrown to it

[Daniel J. Doughty]

In solaris I can use /usr/ucb/ps auxww and I will be able to see all the flags that were thrown to a process when it was called. Is there a similar way to do that in HP? The processes I'm talking about receive about 5 lines of text, so using the xpg4 version and reordering the data isn't feasible.

Thanks,
Dan

[James R. Ferguson]

Daniel:

This has come up several times lately. Unfortunately, only a subset of the whole command string is saved by 'ps'. An old document (#1653012245) notes that "the pstat kernel code data structures were modified in 8.0 and the command string length was reduced to 60 characters. There is no standard for this length...[and] this length
should not be relied on in future releases."

This is consistent with the man pages for ps which also note: "Users of ps must not rely on the exact field widths and spacing of its output, as these will vary depending on the system, the release of HP-UX, and the data to be displayed."

...JRF...

[Alan Riggs]

Unfortunately, James is right. It is one of the things I would like to see changed in future HP releases, but I am not holding my breath.

The best workaround I know is to replace the binary/script in quesion with a wrapper which calls your program while recording the flags & PID in a logfile.