List processes that have been running more than 2 hours

Question

How can I list processes, with a defined name, that have been running for more than 2 hours. This is what I have tried.

ps -efo pid,comm,etime | grep 'process name' | awk '{print $3}' 

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This is for Solaris.

Or can someone help how to create a script that will send an email with the process IDs if there are processes running longer than 2 hours.

Solution

One liner to find processes that have been running for over 2 hours

ps -e -o "pid,etimes,command" | awk '{if($2>7200) print $0}'

Explanation:

ps: process snapshot command

-e: list all processes

-o: include only specified columns

pid: process id

etimes: elapsed time since the process was started, in seconds

command: command with all its arguments as a string

awk: pattern scanning and processing language

$2: second token from each line (default separator is space)

7200: 7200 seconds = 2 hours

$0: the whole line in awk

More:

man ps
man awk

Comments

[Andrew Henle]

What do you mean by "longer than 2 hours"? Wall-clock time since the process was started? CPU time consumed?

[Andrew Henle]

The modification time of /proc/[PID] is going to be the time the process started. I tried to see if some variation of find /proc \! -mmin 120 ... would work, but wasn't able to come up with a proper find command that would limit the depth of the search to just the /proc/[PID] level in the limited time I had. Someone with better skill with find can probably solve the problem easily. Note that you will pick up a lot of OS processes that you really don't want to kill.

[L. Scott Johnson]

The "something you wrote" is missing?

[Mark Stewart]

Yes I had serious formatting issues when I tried to post code. Cleaned up and now posted. :D