If I know the PID number of a process, how can I get its name?

Question

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?

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

# 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

Answer 6

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.

Answer 7

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

Answer 8

Simmilar to slhck's Answer, but relying on file operations instead of command invocations:

MYPID=1
cat "/proc/$MYPID/comm"

Answer 9

I find the easiest method to be with the following command:

ps -awxs | grep pid

Answer 10

If you want to see the path of the process by PID. You can use the pwdx command. The pwdx command reports the full path of the PID process.

$ pwdx 13896
13896: /home/user/python_program

Source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/63447358/6077264

Answer 11

You can also use this command:

cat /proc/PID/comm

It also works without root.