How can I know the absolute path of a running process?

Question

If I have multiple copies of the same app on the disk, and only one is running, as I can see with ps, how can I know the absolute path to distinguish from the others?

Answer 1

% sudo ls -l /proc/PID/exe

eg:

% ps -auxwe | grep 24466
root     24466  0.0  0.0   1476   280 ?        S     2009   0:00 supervise sshd
% sudo ls -l /proc/24466/exe
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Feb  1 18:05 /proc/24466/exe -> /package/admin/daemontools-0.76/command/supervise

Answer 2

ps auxwwwe

Source:

http://serverfault.com/questions/62322/getting-full-path-of-executables-in-ps-auxwww-output

Answer 3

One way is ps -ef

Answer 4

The quick answer is to use ps with options or the /proc filesystem info. That will usually work, but is not guaranteed. In general, there is no definite, guaranteed answer. For instance, what if the executing file is deleted during execution, so that there is no path to the file?

See the Unix FAQ for a little more detail, particularly questions 4.3 and 4.4.

Answer 5

pwdx $pid

This command will display the path of the process from where it is running.