Process & Resource Monitoring (Top/Htop/Ps/Systemd)

Stop ps from lying to you about your process start times

🧩 The Challenge

Dealing with a process that keeps dying and restarting, but ps defaults to showing you just the day and hour. When you’re trying to figure out if it just crashed five seconds ago or if it’s been running for a week, that standard output is pretty useless.

💡 The Fix

Switch your output format to show the actual start time or elapsed time so you can see if the process is as fresh as a new install or actually stable.

ps -eo pid,lstart,cmd | grep your_process_name_here

⚙️ Why It Works

By overriding the default column settings with the -o flag, you force the kernel to report the precise wall-clock start time instead of those generic, rounded-off timestamps.

🚀 Pro-Tip: Stick etime in there if you want to see exactly how many seconds it’s been alive since the last restart.

Linux Tips & Tricks | © ngelinux.com | 8/16/2026