How to get the current working directory of a process in Linux

Sometimes we encounter  situations where you need to  find the current working directory of a running process. There are several ways to get this information in a Linux machine.

Method 1:

We can get the current working directory (and more details) of a process with pid $PID, by checking the contents of /proc/$PID folder.

Example:

For a process with process ID 3551

[root@10 ~]# readlink /proc/3551/cwd

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts

Or with more details,

[root@10 ~]# ll /proc/3551

total 0

dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 attr

-r-------- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 auxv

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:05 cmdline

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 coredump_filter

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 cpuset

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 cwd -> /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts

-r-------- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 environ

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:05 exe -> /sbin/dhclient

dr-x------ 2 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 fd

dr-x------ 2 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 fdinfo

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 io

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 limits

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 loginuid

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 maps

-rw------- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 mem

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 mounts

-r-------- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 mountstats

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 oom_adj

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 oom_score

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 root -> /

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 schedstat

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 smaps

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:05 stat

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 statm

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:12 status

dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 task

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep  2 21:15 wchan

Method 2:

Use pwdx command.

Example:

For a process with process ID 3551

[root@10 ~]# pwdx 3551

3551: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts

Method 3:

Use lsof command.

Example:

For a process with process ID 3551

[root@10 ~]# lsof -p 3551

dhclient  3551      root  cwd       DIR      253,0     4096    1769476 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts

dhclient  3551      root  rtd       DIR      253,0     4096          2 /

....