1PIDOF(8) Linux System Administrator's Manual PIDOF(8)
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6 pidof -- find the process ID of a running program.
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9 pidof [-s] [-c] [-x] [-o omitpid] [-o omitpid..] program [program..]
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12 Pidof finds the process id's (pids) of the named programs. It prints
13 those id's on the standard output. This program is on some systems used
14 in run-level change scripts, especially when the system has a System-V
15 like rc structure. In that case these scripts are located in
16 /etc/rc?.d, where ? is the runlevel. If the system has a start-stop-
17 daemon (8) program that should be used instead.
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20 -s Single shot - this instructs the program to only return one pid.
21 -c Only return process ids that are running with the same root
23 directory. This option is ignored for non-root users, as they
24 will be unable to check the current root directory of processes
25 they do not own.
26 -x Scripts too - this causes the program to also return process
28 id's of shells running the named scripts.
29 -o Tells pidof to omit processes with that process id. The special
31 pid %PPID can be used to name the parent process of the pidof
32 program, in other words the calling shell or shell script.
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35 pidof is simply a (symbolic) link to the killall5 program, which should
36 also be located in /sbin.
37 When pidof is invoked with a full pathname to the program it should
39 find the pid of, it is reasonably safe. Otherwise it is possible that
40 it returns pids of running programs that happen to have the same name
41 as the program you're after but are actually other programs.
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44 shutdown(8), init(8), halt(8), reboot(8)
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47 Miquel van Smoorenburg, miquels@cistron.nl
48 01 Sep 1998 PIDOF(8)