I'm running the following as root:
The "somecommand" puts itself into the background to run, then the shell exits. I'd like to know what the pid of this command is so I can following it with `ps` or `kill -0 pid`. I've tried
but that doesn't work. Ideas?

Hello,

If the command put itself in the background and does not write its PID somewhere (like smbd in /var/run/smbd.pid), I don't see another way than to use pidof :


--
SeB

1 members found this post helpful.

phenixia2003 is right.

There might be cases where you (or someone else) ran the same command before, and I assume pidof will just return several PIDs in that case.
Most versions of the "ps" command support parent ID options (I've used some Busybox systems where that was not the case, others had it.), so you could figure out which process is the one you started by comparing that parent ID to the one of the su command you started. (Should still be running while the command is running on most systems).
Then there's "pstree" that somewhat simplifies the parent-finding because it uses pseudo-graphical output.

Thanks both of you! You gave me an idea. I'm actually running `ps aux` to find users who are running the the VirtualBox task. My "somecommand" is a command to find the names of the virtual machines run by that user, and then shut down the VM as that user. In my original `ps aux` I DO HAVE the PID of the VirtualBox task. I don't need the PID of the shutdown task. I just need to look at the PID of the VirtualBox task.

phenixia2003's pidof will be useful for other situations though -- good suggestion.