[Bug 200201] Re: pidof Stops Searching if Match Found by device/inode Pair.

[Shimi Chen]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to
look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many
changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem
may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if
you could test it on a currently supported Ubuntu version. When you test
it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running
apport-collect 200201 and any other logs that are relevant for this
particular issue.

** Changed in: sysvinit (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Incomplete

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to sysvinit in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/200201

Title:
  pidof Stops Searching if Match Found by device/inode Pair.

Status in “sysvinit” package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: sysvutils

  Ubuntu 7.10, /bin/pidof from 2.86.ds1-14.1ubuntu31 of sysvutils.

  pidof first tries to search by device/inode pair.  If that's succesful
  it doesn't bother searching by other methods.  This can result in it
  sometimes listing all PIDs for the named process, regardless of the
  user, and other times only listing those for $USER.  Compare:

       1  $ ps xauww | grep turnip
       2  peter    30165  0.0  0.0   5028   668 pts/0    S    14:54   0:00 ./turniphead 19999
       3  ralph    30581  0.0  0.0   5036   672 pts/1    S+   14:59   0:00 /tmp/turniphead 2999
       4  ralph    30611  0.0  0.0   5132   848 pts/0    S+   14:59   0:00 grep turnip
       5  $ pidof turniphead
       6  30581 30165
       7  $ pidof /tmp/turniphead
       8  30581
       9  $ ls -l /proc/{30581,30165}/exe
      10  ls: cannot read symbolic link /proc/30165/exe: Permission denied
      11  lrwxrwxrwx 1 peter peter 0 2008-03-09 14:59 /proc/30165/exe
      12  lrwxrwxrwx 1 ralph ralph 0 2008-03-09 14:59 /proc/30581/exe -> /tmp/turniphead

  #6 is the result of searching by name in /proc/$pid/stat.  However,
  pidof(1) suggests invoking pidof "with a full pathname to the program"
  is better but that only gives #8 because PID 30165 is owned by a
  different user so /proc/30165/exe is unreadable.

  Either pidof needs to search in multiple ways to come up with all
  answers, or the man page should detail the search strategy and pitfalls,
  or command line options should allow the "all" method of searching.
  Having #6 and #8 differ when #5 and #7 are both specifying the same
  executable is not obvious.

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sysvinit/+bug/200201/+subscriptions