pidof
find the process ID of a running program.
TLDR
List all process IDs with given name
List a single process ID with given name
List process IDs including scripts with given name
Kill all processes with given name
SYNOPSIS
pidof [-s] [-c] [-q] [-w] [-x] [-o omitpid[,omitpid...]...] [-t] [-S separator] program [program...]
DESCRIPTION
Pidof finds the process id's (pids) of the named programs. It prints those id's on the standard output.
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.
- -q
-
Quiet mode, suppress any output and only sets the exit status accordingly.
- -w
-
Show also processes that do not have visible command line (e.g. kernel worker threads).
- -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.
- -t
-
Shows all thread ids instead of pids.
- -S separator
-
Use separator as a separator put between pids. Used only when more than one pids are printed for the program. The -d option is an alias for this option for sysvinit pidof compatibility.
EXIT STATUS
- 0
-
At least one program was found with the requested name.
- 1
-
No program was found with the requested name.
BUGS
When using the -x option, pidof only has a simple method for detecting scripts and will miss scripts that, for example, use env. This limitation is due to how the scripts look in the proc filesystem.
