ps stat

PROCESS STATE CODES

Here are the different values that the s, stat and state output specifiers

(header "STAT" or "S") will display to describe the state of a process.

D Uninterruptible sleep (usually IO)

R Running or runnable (on run queue)

S Interruptible sleep (waiting for an event to complete)

T Stopped, either by a job control signal or because it is being traced.

W paging (not valid since the 2.6.xx kernel)

X dead (should never be seen)

Z Defunct ("zombie") process, terminated but not reaped by its parent.

For BSD formats and when the stat keyword is used, additional characters may

be displayed:

< high-priority (not nice to other users)

N low-priority (nice to other users)

L has pages locked into memory (for real-time and custom IO)

s is a session leader

l is multi-threaded (using CLONE_THREAD, like NPTL pthreads do)

+ is in the foreground process group