pidof

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



NAME
       pidof -- find the process ID of a running program.

SYNOPSIS
       pidof [-s] [-x] [-o omitpid] [-o 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.

       -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.

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

AUTHOR
       Miquel van Smoorenburg, miquels AT cistron.nl



                                  01 Sep 1998                         PIDOF(8)