pwdx

Additional Notes

pwdx reports the current working directory (cwd) of one or more running processes. It reads the symbolic link /proc/PID/cwd to determine where each process is operating.

System administrators use pwdx when troubleshooting processes that cannot find files, determining which directory a daemon started from, or investigating suspicious processes. It is simpler than reading /proc/PID/cwd manually and supports multiple PIDs at once.

Syntax

pwdx [options] [pid...]

Parameters

• pid: One or more process IDs.

Common Options

• -V, --version: Show version information.
• --help: Show help and exit.

Examples

pwdx 1234

Show the working directory of PID 1234.

pwdx $$

Show the working directory of the current shell.

pwdx 1

Show the working directory of the init/systemd process.

pwdx $(pidof nginx)

Show working directories of all nginx processes.

for pid in $(pgrep -u www-data); do pwdx $pid; done

Show working directories of all processes owned by www-data.

Practical Notes

• pwdx is part of the psmisc package. It is available on all major Linux distributions.
• If the process is a zombie, pwdx reports an error because /proc/PID/cwd is no longer available.
• A process may change its working directory after startup. The cwd shown is the current value, not the startup directory.
• For a broader view, combine with lsof -p PID to see all open file descriptors, not just the working directory.
• The same information is available from ls -l /proc/PID/cwd.