How do I get the path of a process in Unix Linux

Question

In Windows environment there is an API to obtain the path which is running a process  Is there something similar in Unix   Linux   Or is there some other way to do that in these environments

User · Accepted Answer

On Linux  the symlink  proc  lt pid gt  exe has the path of the executable   Use the command readlink -f  proc  lt pid gt  exe to get the value   On AIX  this file does not exist   You could compare cksum  lt actual path to binary gt  and cksum  proc  lt pid gt  object a out

User · Answer

A little bit late  but all the answers were specific to linux   If you need also unix  then you need this   char   getExecPath  char   path size t dest len  char   argv0        char   baseName   NULL      char   systemPath   NULL      char   candidateDir   NULL          the easiest case  we are in linux        size t buff len      if  buff len   readlink    proc self exe   path  dest len - 1     -1                path  buff len      0           dirname  path           strcat   path                return path                Ups    not in linux  no  guarantee            check if we have something like execve  foobar   NULL  NULL         if  argv0    NULL                   we surrender and give current path instead            if  getcwd  path  dest len     NULL  return NULL          strcat   path                return path                 argv 0            if dest len  lt  PATH MAX may cause buffer overflow        if   realpath  argv0  path    amp  amp    access  path  F OK                  dirname  path           strcat   path                return path                Current path        baseName   basename  argv0       if  getcwd  path  dest len - strlen  baseName  - 1     NULL          return NULL       strcat  path            strcat  path  baseName       if  access  path  F OK     0                dirname  path           strcat   path                return path                Try the PATH         systemPath   getenv   PATH        if  systemPath    NULL                dest len--          systemPath   strdup  systemPath           for  candidateDir   strtok  systemPath        candidateDir    NULL  candidateDir   strtok  NULL                              strncpy  path  candidateDir  dest len               strncat  path       dest len               strncat  path  baseName  dest len                if  access path  F OK     0                                free  systemPath                   dirname  path                   strcat   path                        return path                                  free systemPath           dest len                  again someone has use execve  we dont knowe the executable name  we surrender and give instead current path        if  getcwd  path  dest len - 1     NULL  return NULL      strcat   path            return path      EDITED  Fixed the bug reported by Mark lakata

User · Answer

The below command search for the name of the process in the running process list and redirect the pid to pwdx command to find the location of the process   ps -ef   grep  abc   grep -v grep  awk   print  2     xargs pwdx   Replace  abc  with your specific pattern   Alternatively  if you could configure it as a function in  bashrc  you may find in handy to use if you need this to be used frequently   ps1     ps -ef   grep   1   grep -v grep  awk   print  2     xargs pwdx      For eg    admin myserver  home2 Avro AvroGen   ps1 nifi  18404   home2 Avro NIFI   Hope this helps someone sometime

User · Answer

Find the path to a process name     bin bash    author Lukas Gottschall PID  ps aux   grep precessname   grep -v grep   awk    print  2     PATH  ls -ald --color never  proc  PID exe   awk    print  10     echo  PATH

User · Answer

thanks      Kiwy with AIX   getPathByPid         if    -e  proc  1 object a out     then         inode  ls -i  proc  1 object a out 2 gt  dev null   awk   print  1            if       -eq 0     then             strnode   inode                 strNum  ls -li  proc  1 object  2 gt  dev null   grep  strnode   awk   print  NF     grep   0-9   1      0-9   1                    if       -eq 0     then                   jfs2 10 6 5869                 n1  echo  strNum awk -F      print  2                    n2  echo  strNum awk -F      print  3                      brw-rw----    1 root     system       10   6 Aug 23 2013  hd9var                 strexp   b    n1     space     1     n2    space     1              b  10    1   5   1                        strdf  ls -l  dev    grep  strexp   awk   print  NF                    if       -eq 0     then                     strMpath  df   grep  strdf   awk   print  NF                        if       -eq 0     then                         find  strMpath -inum  inode 2 gt  dev null                         if       -eq 0     then                             return 0                         fi                     fi                 fi             fi         fi     fi     return 1

User · Answer

You can also get the path on GNU Linux with  not thoroughly tested    char file 32   char buf 64   pid t pid   getpid    sprintf file    proc  i cmdline   pid   FILE  f   fopen file   r    fgets buf  64  f   fclose f     If you want the directory of the executable for perhaps changing the working directory to the process s directory  for media data etc   you need to drop everything after the last      strrchr buf           0     chdir buf

User · Answer

pwdx  lt process id gt   This command will fetch the process path from where it is executing

User · Answer

There s no  guaranteed to work anywhere  method   Step 1 is to check argv 0   if the program was started by its full path  this would  usually  have the full path  If it was started by a relative path  the same holds  though this requires getting teh current working directory  using getcwd     Step 2  if none of the above holds  is to get the name of the program  then get the name of the program from argv 0   then get the user s PATH from the environment and go through that to see if there s a suitable executable binary with the same name   Note that argv 0  is set by the process that execs the program  so it is not 100  reliable

User · Answer

You can find the exe easily by these ways  just try it yourself    ll  proc  lt PID gt  exe pwdx  lt PID gt  lsof -p  lt PID gt    grep cwd

User · Answer

I use   ps -ef   grep 786   Replace 786 with your PID or process name

User · Answer

In Linux every process has its own folder in  proc  So you could use getpid   to get the pid of the running process and then join it with the path  proc to get the folder you hopefully need   Here s a short example in Python   import os print os path join   proc   str os getpid       Here s the example in ANSI C as well    include  lt stdio h gt   include  lt stdlib h gt   include  lt unistd h gt   include  lt sys types h gt    int main int argc  char   argv        pid t pid   getpid         fprintf stdout   Path to current process    proc  d   n    int pid        return EXIT SUCCESS      Compile it with   gcc -Wall -Werror -g -ansi -pedantic process path c -oprocess path

[linux] How do I get the path of a process in Unix / Linux

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