WAITPID(1) User Commands WAITPID(1)

waitpid - utility to wait for arbitrary processes

waitpid [-v] [--timeout|-t seconds] PID[:inode]...

waitpid is a simple command to wait for arbitrary non-child processes.

It exits after all processes whose PIDs have been passed as arguments have exited.

Optionally, a process can be addressed with the format PID:inode. The inode identifies the unique process’s file descriptor. To retrieve a process’s inode number you can use the getino(1) utility.

-v, --verbose

Be more verbose.

-t, --timeout seconds

Maximum wait time.

-e, --exited

Don’t error on already exited PIDs.

-c, --count count

Number of process exits to wait for.

-h, --help

Display help text and exit.

-V, --version

Display version and exit.

waitpid has the following exit status values:

0

success

1

unspecified failure

2

system does not provide necessary functionality

3

timeout expired

Thomas Weißschuh <thomas@t-8ch.de>

waitpid(2) wait(1P) getino(1)

For bug reports, use the issue tracker https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues.

The waitpid command is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.

2026-04-01 util-linux 2.42