to find process id of program invoking a shell script.

**khuranarahul** · 05-01-2008

A c program is invoking a shell script.I need to find out the process id of the program responsible for invoking the shell script.Is this possible?

**HROAdmin26** · 05-01-2008

Assuming the script name shows up in the process table...

Code:

ps -ef | grep "script_name"

**smolloy** · 05-01-2008

FYI: A shorter (but otherwise identical) way to do that is

Code:

pgrep script_name

The original post gives the impression that the name of the program invoking the shell script is not known, and that this is what he wants to find. Try looking at ps in tree view

Code:

ps -ejH > tempfile.txt

This will output a tree view of all process to a text file which you can then search for the name of the shell script to see what is calling it.

**HROAdmin26** · 05-01-2008

If one process calls a script, the script will *generally* show up in the process table, which is what was asked:

Code:

ps -ef | grep cron

Code:

root      2712     1  0 Apr14 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/cron

Here, PID 1 (init) called the "cron" script, which is running as PID 2712.

Thus, if I wanted to know "what process called cron," I now know that it's PID 1. If I didn't know what PID 1 was, I'd follow it up with:

Code:

ps -ef | grep " 1 "

Either method works.

**khuranarahul** · 05-02-2008

Originally Posted by HROAdmin26

Assuming the script name shows up in the process table...

Code:

ps -ef | grep "script_name"

but i'm not aware which program is invoking the shell script.i need a solution such that as soon as any program invokes the shell script ,i come to know it's process id.

**smolloy** · 05-02-2008

But you know the name of the shell script that is being invoked, so you use the ps command HROAdmin26 gave you, and look for the PID of the process that called it. Just as HROAdmin26 explained.

If you're not sure when the process is going to be called, you could put that command at the top of the shell script in such a way that the information is written out to a file.

**khuranarahul** · 05-02-2008

[QUOTE=khuranarahul;583317]A c program is invoking a shell script.I need to find out the process id of the program responsible for invoking the shell script.Is this possible?i need a solution such that as soon as the program invokes the shell script i come to know the process id of the program.i'm not aware which program is invoking the shell script.with the help of the process id i can trace the program.

**HROAdmin26** · 05-02-2008

If you're not sure when the process is going to be called, you could put that command at the top of the shell script in such a way that the information is written out to a file.

^^^ What Smolloy said.

You have said you don't know the process calling the script. Do you know the name of the script being called? If the script is running, you can search ps for the script name. If you don't know *when* the script is being called, add a command to the script that writes the calling process name and ID to a text file and you can read it later.

Add to script something like:

Process <$CALLING_PROCESS> called me at $DATE >> $FILE

You may have to get the $PID of the calling process, then search ps for that PID to get the exact process name.

**khuranarahul** · 05-03-2008

what is the output of the command echo $!.
also do we have any arguments with the echo command to print the process id or the parent process id?

**kakariko81280** · 05-04-2008

Code:

chris@angua:~$ ps -o ppid -p $$
 PPID
23376

Might do what you need. -o selects the fields to output. -p selects the process you are interested in, and $$ is the current pid of the shell script.

Chris...

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