pidof -- find the process ID of a running program.
SYNOPSIS
pidof [-s] [-x] [-o omitpid] [-o omitpid..] program [pro
gram..]
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, espe
cially 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 Tells pidof to omit processes with that process id.
The special pid %PPID can be used to name the par
ent process of the pidof program, in other words
the calling shell or shell script.
NOTES
pidof is simply a (symbolic) link to the killall5 program,
which should also be located in /sbin.
When pidof is invoked with a full pathname to the program
it should find the pid of, it is reasonably safe. Other
wise it is possible that it returns pids of running pro
grams 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@cistron.nl
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