How to identify an application executable from ps

Question

If I execute

ps -ef | grep java

I get the following

noaccess 12144   908   0   Apr 28 ?         697:47 /usr/java/bin/java -server -Xmx128m -XX:+UseParallelGC -XX:ParallelGCThreads=4

Though, in this server we have many Java applications running. How do I identify which .jar was invoked by the ps output is showing?

You should re-evaluate the way you launch your applications. Eclipse and Aptana both report the launched jar properly. — RobotHumans, Mar 13, 2012 at 17:53
Parsing ps is always unreliable. You should have one process that runs them all, and keeps control over them. See Process Management. — geirha, Mar 13, 2012 at 20:14
sometimes you don't have much control on how you start your third-party server (e.g. Hudson, Nexus). When one hang unexpectedly and has to be killed, how do you identify which one is which from the ps command? — Pomario, Mar 14, 2012 at 13:07

eugenevd · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-27 15:07:04Z

2

You could try lsof. For example,

lsof -a -p 12144 -u noaccess | grep REG

which would list the regular files that process/user has open.

From the result you might be able to determine which java process is which.

answered Sep 27, 2012 at 15:07

eugenevd

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