1 .\" Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, Daniel Quinlan <quinlan@yggdrasil.com>
2 .\" Copyright (C) 2002-2008, 2017, Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
3 .\" Copyright (C) 2023, Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>
5 .\" SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-or-later
7 .TH proc_pid_exe 5 (date) "Linux man-pages (unreleased)"
9 /proc/pid/exe \- symbolic link to program pathname
13 Under Linux 2.2 and later, this file is a symbolic link
14 containing the actual pathname of the executed command.
15 This symbolic link can be dereferenced normally; attempting to open
16 it will open the executable.
19 to run another copy of the same executable that is being run by
22 If the pathname has been unlinked, the symbolic link will contain the
23 string \[aq]\ (deleted)\[aq] appended to the original pathname.
24 .\" The following was still true as at kernel 2.6.13
25 In a multithreaded process, the contents of this symbolic link
26 are not available if the main thread has already terminated
28 .BR pthread_exit (3)).
30 Permission to dereference or read
32 this symbolic link is governed by a ptrace access mode
33 .B PTRACE_MODE_READ_FSCREDS
37 Under Linux 2.0 and earlier,
39 is a pointer to the binary which was executed,
40 and appears as a symbolic link.
43 call on this file under Linux 2.0 returns a string in the format:
51 For example, [0301]:1502 would be inode 1502 on device major 03 (IDE,
52 MFM, etc. drives) minor 01 (first partition on the first drive).
57 option can be used to locate the file.