pidof

pidof is a program for Linux that outputs the process number (PID, Process ID) of one or more running processes. Among other kernels, pgrep or ps are often used as alternatives.

pidof is usually called Symbolic Link to killall5 realized, therefore, this program determines the exact characteristics of pidof (but check killall5 , like for example, busybox , about which name it was started and expected about the launch name pidof parameters other than through the Start name killall5 - see also the different man pages at the end of this article). killall5 is a substitute for the in for the Linux Kernel System V existing killall , which for a number of run level is required scripts.

It is recommended to always call pidof with the full path details of the program to be searched for. Otherwise it can happen that it returns the process numbers of different programs that happen to have the same name.

Examples

$ pidof ntpd
3580 3579

$ pidof emacs
22256

See also

• kill (Unix)
• Unix commands

Web links

• pidof(8): find the process ID of a running program -  Debian GNU / Linux systems administration man page
• killall5(8): send a signal to all processes -  Debian GNU / Linux system administration manual page - variant according to System V
• killall(8): kill processes by name -  Debian GNU / Linux system administration man page