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NAME

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

SYNOPSIS

       pidof [-s] [-c] [-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.

       -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.

       -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. Note that
       that the executable  name  of  running  processes  is  calculated  with
       readlink(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@cistron.nl

                                  01 Sep 1998