PCRED(1)

📦
version 0.2.23 · 2 versions
, in fedora 44

💖 PCRED(1) — bestie edition 💖

okay so real talk, this is the manual page for pcred, from the General Commands Manual section, and it literally just prints process credentials. that's it. that's the whole vibe. let's get into it ✨

✨ NAME ✨

pcred — print process credentials 🫶

like. it prints credentials. of processes. iconic behavior honestly.

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

pcred [-a] [pid | core]...

yes queen, that's the whole thing. short, sweet, slay.

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

So pcred prints the credentials of each process or process core file you hand it — and when we say credentials we mean the effective, real, saved, and filesystem UIDs and GIDs. all four flavors. no cap.

By default? Here's the cute part: if the effective, real, saved-set, and filesystem user (group) IDs are all identical, they get printed in condensed form as e/r/s/fsuid (or e/r/s/fsgid for groups, obvi). But if they're not identical, pcred prints them individually, one by one, because it's not gonna lie to you bestie.

Supplementary groups are also displayed. yes, all of them. we're thorough here 💜

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -a, --all — Report all credential information separately. By default, if the effective, real, saved-set, and filesystem user (group) IDs are identical, they are reported in condensed form. so -a is the "no, show me EVERYTHING separately" button. main character energy fr fr.

🎀 OPERANDS 🎀

  • pid — Process ID list. And get this: a /proc/pid path may also be used, which means shell expansions like /proc/* will totally target all processes on the system. that's a lot of processes bestie, just saying. 🦋
  • core — Process core file, as produced by systemd-coredump(8), or an Ubuntu/Debian apport .crash file. For systemd core files, the file does not need to exist on disk — if it has been removed, the corresponding systemd journal entry will be used instead. See NOTES below 👀

💀 EXIT STATUS 💀

  • 0 on success 🎉
  • non-zero if an error occurs — like no such process, permission denied, or invalid option. yeah. those. 😭

🌈 FILES 🌈

  • /proc/pid/* — Process information and control files.

🧚 NOTES 🧚

okay this is the part where it gets kinda unhinged (affectionate).

When a core file has been removed by systemd-tmpfiles(8) or by storage limits configured in coredump.conf(5), the systemd-coredump(8) journal entry for the crash may still be available. so in this case, the path to the deleted core file can be passed as the core operand even though the file no longer exists on disk, and process metadata will be retrieved from the journal entry instead. the file is gone but the lore remains. ✨

Use coredumpctl(1) to obtain the path of a missing core file, e.g.:

coredumpctl list <name> -F COREDUMP_FILENAME

Ubuntu/Debian apport .crash files are also supported 🫶 These files use Debian control syntax with base64-encoded gzip core dumps. Text fields (such as ProcCmdline, ProcEnviron, and ExecutablePath) are mapped to COREDUMP_* fields, and the core dump is extracted on first access.

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

pfiles(1), coredumpctl(1), proc(5), credentials(7)

like, go read those too. they're giving reference material. iykyk 💜

and that's the whole page bestie!! this was pcred 0.2.23, dated September 2026, and honestly? she ate. go print some credentials. slay 💅✨🎀

📦 where this page comes from