How can I increase the ps column width for column "user"?

Tiny patch to procps-ng source

Seems a quick patch of the source code would do the trick; normally the user column is set to 8 and will truncate as detailed below.

Patch applies to commit 64fa8898 which was tagged v3.3.5 (linked above)

You might as well download the latest source if you're going to compile it though—I'd suggest downloading the latest source and edit the "USER" line in procps-ng source file ps/output.c from 8 to 16 as below instead of patching the old (2013-ish) version:

--- ps/output.c | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/ps/output.c b/ps/output.c index 9644ed3..41c2eda 100644 --- a/ps/output.c +++ b/ps/output.c @@ -1564,7 +1564,7 @@ static const format_struct format_array[] = { {"uname", "USER", pr_euser, sr_euser, 8, USR, DEC, ET|USER}, /* man page misspelling of user? */ {"upr", "UPR", pr_nop, sr_nop, 3, 0, BSD, TO|RIGHT}, /*usrpri*/ {"uprocp", "UPROCP", pr_nop, sr_nop, 8, 0, BSD, AN|RIGHT}, -{"user", "USER", pr_euser, sr_euser, 8, USR, U98, ET|USER}, /* BSD n forces this to UID */ +{"user", "USER", pr_euser, sr_euser, 16, USR, U98, ET|USER}, /* BSD n forces this to UID */ {"usertime", "USER", pr_nop, sr_nop, 4, 0, DEC, ET|RIGHT}, {"usrpri", "UPR", pr_nop, sr_nop, 3, 0, DEC, TO|RIGHT}, /*upr*/ {"util", "C", pr_c, sr_pcpu, 2, 0, SGI, ET|RIGHT}, // not sure about "C" -- 

Addendum

According to the source for the ps:

// The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6 (IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 Edition) // requires that user and group names print as decimal numbers if there is // not enough room in the column. However, we will now truncate such names // and provide a visual hint of such truncation. Hopefully, this will reduce // the volume of bug reports regarding that former 'feature'. // // The UNIX and POSIX way to change column width is to rename it: // ps -o pid,user=CumbersomeUserNames -o comm // The easy way is to directly specify the desired width: // ps -o pid,user:19,comm // 

This question was posed in 2014 on the askubuntu.com forums

My solution is inspired by the above link, but made with some portable goodness. Add this function to your .bashrc and get on with it!

ps() { if [[ $@ =~ .u* || *u ]]; then command getent passwd |\ awk -F':' ' \ !len || length($1) > len {len=length($1);s=$1}\ END{print s, len; system("ps axo user:"len",pid,pcpu,pmem,vsz,rss,tty,stat,start,time,comm");}' else command ps "$@" fi } 

Add the above function to your ~/.bashrc, ps aux | grep someshit as you usually would, and enjoy output with your columns formatted for the largest possible username as determined in a friendly regular user way from /etc/passwd using getent -- then parsed via awk with the help of bash for saving the integer value related to the longest username string.

Now when I

$ ps axu | grep this

or

$ ps uaz | grep this

or

$ ps aux | grep this

Output:

thisisareallylonguser 9289 0.0 0.0 23192 4716 pts/6 S 17:59:54 00:00:00 bash

Let me know if you want me to step through the bash function in the event that it isn't immediately clear.