I am running Solaris 8 on sparc hardware. I want to be able to monitor the start and end times of processes on the box. Is there a log somewhere that records that, or a utility that can be run to gather stats?
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The PS command is probably the most general tool to determine process information. It gives information such as PID (process ID), UID (user ID),
priority, control terminal, memory use, CPU time and current status. One can also use the timex command to time processes. This command will give you information on how the command is executed; the elapsed time, user time and system time, reported in seconds. Process accounting data for the command
and all its children can also be listed or summarized.
Additionally, the information in the /usr/proc/bin directory contains process tools that can be used to display detailed information about processes, in /proc, which is the process file system (procfs). It stores images of active processes by PID number. The ptime command may be what you are looking for. Do a man on proc for more info on the tools available to you. Good luck!!
More information: Here's a tip on using the PS command.
This was first published in January 2005