State Code

The process state code indicates the state for a process.

Short Code Meaning Description
D Uninterruptible sleep Usually refers to IO processes.
l Is multi-threaded (using CLONE_THREAD, like NPTL pthreads do)
L Has pages locked into memory (for real-time and custom IO)
N Low-priority (nice to other users)
R Running runnable (on run queue)
s Is a session leader
S Interruptible sleep Waiting for an event to complete.
T Stopped May have been stopped by control signal or trace.
W Paging Storing or retrieving data.
Z Defunct (“zombie”) process Terminated but not collected by its parent process.
< High-priority
+ Belongs to foreground process group.