man > PIDOF(8)

PIDOF(8)                         Linux System Administrator's Manual                        PIDOF(8)

NAME
       pidof - find the process ID of a running program

SYNOPSIS
       pidof  [-s]  [-c] [-n] [-x] [-z] [-o omitpid[,omitpid...]]  [-o omitpid[,omitpid...]...]  [-d
       sep] program [program...]

DESCRIPTION
       pidof finds the process id's (PIDs) of the named programs. It prints those id's on the  stan‐
       dard  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 PIDs 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 direc‐
              tory 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 variable PIDOF_NETFS  may  be
              set and exported.

       -q     Do  not  display  matched  PIDs  to standard out. Simply exit with a status of true or
              false to indicate whether a matching PID was found.

       -x     Scripts too - this causes the program to also return process id's  of  shells  running
              the named scripts.

       -z     Try  to detect processes which are stuck in zombie (Z) status. Usually these processes
              are skipped as trying to deal with them can cause pidof  or  related  tools  to  hang.
              Note:  In  the past pidof would ignore processes in the uninterruptable state (D), un‐
              less the -z flag was specified. This is no longer the case.  The  pidof  program  will
              find and report processes in the D state whether -z is specified or not.

       -d sep Tells  pidof  to use sep as an output separator if more than one PID is shown. The de‐
              fault separator is a space.

       -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(8); 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  hap‐
       pen  to  have the same name as the program you're after but are actually other programs. Note
       that the executable name of running processes is calculated  with  readlink(2),  so  symbolic
       links to executables will also match.

       Zombie  processes  or  processes in disk sleep (states Z and D, respectively) are ignored, as
       attempts to access the stats of these will sometimes fail.  The -z  flag  (see  above)  tells
       pidof  to  try to detect these sleeping and zombie processes, at the risk of failing or hang‐
       ing.


SEE ALSO
       shutdown(8), init(8), halt(8), reboot(8), killall5(8)

AUTHOR
       Miquel van Smoorenburg

sysvinit                                     01 Sep 1998                                    PIDOF(8)