Comments on: Is that even running?

By: Jakub Narebski

Jakub Narebski — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 02:25:24 +0000

pidof is part of Sys V init scripts; pgrep is from procps (which you have probably installed for 'top' utility); you have to match command name exactly (e.g. emacs-x for GNU Emacs in X Window) for "ps -C cmdlist";

By: Aristotle Pagaltzis

Aristotle Pagaltzis — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 01:36:18 +0000

(And then of course �alias got=pgrep�. ;-) )

By: Aristotle Pagaltzis

Aristotle Pagaltzis — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 01:35:25 +0000

Jakub�s suggestions are good; personally I prefer pgrep, as in �pgrep tomcat�.

By: Jakub Nar?bski

Jakub Nar?bski — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:19:55 +0000

If you have it installed, you can use `pidof` (on my system at /sbin/pidof) to select process(es) by pid(s), instead of using pipeline of grep to filter output of ps. Or you can use ‘-C cmdlist’ option of ps.

By: Andy Mortimer

Andy Mortimer — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:36:15 +0000

There’s a neat trick I stumbled on somewhere which avoids the need for the second grep, and makes the raw commands a lot more pleasant to type. It takes advantage of a character class containing only one letter, but which breaks up the string so it doesn’t match itself:

ps -eaf | grep ‘[t]omcat’

(Use your favourite switches in place of -eaf). Because “[t]omcat” doesn’t contain the string “tomcat”, the grep command itself doesn’t match.