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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]  [-m] [-o omitpid[,omitpid..]]  [-o omit-
       pid[,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.
       -m     When used with -o, will also omit any processes  that  have  the
              same  argv[0] and argv[1] as any explicitly omitted process ids.
              This can be used to avoid multiple  shell  scripts  concurrently
              calling pidof returning each other's pids.
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  read-
       link(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 AT cistron.nl

                                  01 Sep 1998                         PIDOF(8)