If I have the PID number for a process (on a UNIX machine), how can I find out the name of its associated process?
What do I have to do?
49 Answers
On all POSIX-compliant systems, and with Linux, you can use ps:
ps -p 1337 -o comm= Here, the process is selected by its PID with -p. The -o option specifies the output format, comm meaning the command name.
For the full command, not just the name of the program, use:
ps -p 1337 -o command See also: ps – The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6
You can find the process name or the command used by the process-id or pid from
/proc/<pid>/cmdline by doing
cat /proc/<pid>/cmdline Here pid is the pid for which you want to find the name
For example:
# ps aux ................ ................ user 2480 0.0 1.2 119100 12728 pts/0 Sl 22:42 0:01 gnome-terminal ................ ................ To find the process name used by pid 2480 you use can
# cat /proc/2480/cmdline gnome-terminal To get the path of of the program using a certain pid you can use:
ps ax|egrep "^ [PID]" 
alternatively you can use:
ps -a [PID] Or also:
readlink /proc/[PID]/exe You can use pmap. I am searching for PID 6649. And cutting off the extra process details.
$ pmap 6649 | head -1 6649: /usr/lib64/firefox/firefox # ls -la /proc/ID_GOES_HERE/exe Example:
# ls -la /proc/1374/exe lrwxrwxrwx 1 chmm chmm 0 Mai 5 20:46 /proc/1374/exe -> /usr/bin/telegram-desktop You can Also use awk in combination with ps
ps aux | awk '$2 == PID number for a process { print $0 }' example:
root@cprogrammer:~# ps aux | awk '$2 == 1 { print $0 }' root 1 0.0 0.2 24476 2436 ? Ss 15:38 0:01 /sbin/init to print HEAD LINE you can use
ps --headers aux |head -n 1 && ps aux | awk '$2 == 1 { print $0 }' (or) ps --headers aux |head -n 1; ps aux | awk '$2 == 1 { print $0 }' root@cprogrammer:~# ps --headers aux |head -n 1 && ps aux | awk '$2 == 1 { print $0 }' USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 1 0.0 0.2 24476 2436 ? Ss 15:38 0:01 /sbin/init Simmilar to slhck's Answer, but relying on file operations instead of command invocations:
MYPID=1 cat "/proc/$MYPID/comm" Surprisingly, no one has mentioned the -f (full command) option for ps. I like to use it with -e (everything) and pipe the results to grep so I can narrow my search.
ps -ef | grep <PID> This is also very useful for looking at full commands that someone is running that are taking a lot of resources on your system. This will show you the options and arguments passed to the command.
1I find the easiest method to be with the following command:
ps -awxs | grep pid 
