man/pidof.8

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  18 .TH PIDOF 8 "01 Sep 1998" "" "Linux System Administrator's Manual"
  19 .SH NAME
  20 pidof -- find the process ID of a running program.
  21 .SH SYNOPSIS
  22 .B pidof
  23 .RB [ \-s ]
  24 .RB [ \-c ]
  25 .RB [ \-x ]
  26 .RB [ \-o
  27 .IR omitpid ]
  28 .RB [ \-o
  29 .IR omitpid.. ]
  30 .B program
  31 .RB [ program.. ]
  32 .SH DESCRIPTION
  33 .B Pidof
  34 finds the process id's (pids) of the named programs. It prints those
  35 id's on the standard output. This program is on some systems used in
  36 run-level change scripts, especially when the system has a
  37 \fISystem-V\fP like \fIrc\fP structure. In that case these scripts are
  38 located in /etc/rc?.d, where ? is the runlevel. If the system has
  39 a
  40 .B start-stop-daemon
  41 (8) program that should be used instead.
  42 .SH OPTIONS
  43 .IP -s
  44 Single shot - this instructs the program to only return one \fIpid\fP.
  45 .IP -c
  46 Only return process ids that are running with the same root directory.
  47 This option is ignored for non-root users, as they will be unable to check
  48 the current root directory of processes they do not own.
  49 .IP -x
  50 Scripts too - this causes the program to also return process id's of
  51 shells running the named scripts.
  52 .IP "-o \fIomitpid\fP"
  53 Tells \fIpidof\fP to omit processes with that process id. The special
  54 pid \fB%PPID\fP can be used to name the parent process of the \fIpidof\fP
  55 program, in other words the calling shell or shell script.
  56 .SH "EXIT STATUS"
  57 .TP
  58 .B 0
  59 At least one program was found with the requested name.
  60 .TP
  61 .B 1
  62 No program was found with the requested name.
  63 .SH NOTES
  64 \fIpidof\fP is actually the same program as \fIkillall5\fP;
  65 the program behaves according to the name under which it is called.
  66 .PP
  67 When \fIpidof\fP is invoked with a full pathname to the program it
  68 should find the pid of, it is reasonably safe. Otherwise it is possible
  69 that it returns pids of running programs that happen to have the same name
  70 as the program you're after but are actually other programs.
  71 .SH SEE ALSO
  72 .BR shutdown (8),
  73 .BR init (8),
  74 .BR halt (8),
  75 .BR reboot (8),
  76 .BR killall5 (8)
  77 .SH AUTHOR
  78 Miquel van Smoorenburg, miquels@cistron.nl