PIDOF
Section: Linux System Administrator's Manual (8)
Updated: 01 Sep 1998
Page Index
NAME
pidof -- find the process ID of a running program.
SYNOPSIS
pidof
[
-s]
[
-c]
[
-n]
[
-x]
[
-o
omitpid[,omitpid..]]
[
-o
omitpid[,omitpid..]..]
program
[
program..]
DESCRIPTION
Pidof
finds the process id's (pids) of the named programs. It prints those
id's on the standard output. This program is on some systems used in
run-level change scripts, especially when the system has a
System-V like
rc structure. In that case these scripts are
located in /etc/rc?.d, where ? is the runlevel. If the system has
a
start-stop-daemon
(8) program that should be used instead.
OPTIONS
- -s
-
Single shot - this instructs the program to only return one pid.
- -c
-
Only return process ids that are running with the same root directory.
This option is ignored for non-root users, as they will be unable to check
the current root directory of processes they do not own.
- -n
-
Avoid
stat(2)
system function call on all binaries which are located on network
based file systems like
NFS.
Instead of using this option the the variable
PIDOF_NETFS
may be set and exported.
- -x
-
Scripts too - this causes the program to also return process id's of
shells running the named scripts.
- -o omitpid
-
Tells pidof to omit processes with that process id. The special
pid %PPID can be used to name the parent process of the pidof
program, in other words the calling shell or shell script.
EXIT STATUS
- 0
-
At least one program was found with the requested name.
- 1
-
No program was found with the requested name.
NOTES
pidof is actually the same program as
killall5;
the program behaves according to the name under which it is called.
When pidof is invoked with a full pathname to the program it
should find the pid of, it is reasonably safe. Otherwise it is possible
that it returns pids of running programs that happen to have the same name
as the program you're after but are actually other programs. Note that
that the executable name of running processes is calculated with
readlink(2),
so symbolic links to executables will also match.
SEE ALSO
shutdown(8),
init(8),
halt(8),
reboot(8),
killall5(8)
AUTHOR
Miquel van Smoorenburg,
miquels@cistron.nl