What is a good pattern for using a Global Mutex in C#?

Question

The Mutex class is very misunderstood, and Global mutexes even more so.

What is good, safe pattern to use when creating Global mutexes?

One that will work

Answer 1

There is a race condition in the accepted answer when 2 processes running under 2 different users trying to initialize the mutex at the same time. After the first process initializes the mutex, if the second process tries to initialize the mutex before the first process sets the access rule to everyone, an unauthorized exception will be thrown by the second process.

See below for corrected answer:

using System.Runtime.InteropServices;   //GuidAttribute
using System.Reflection;                //Assembly
using System.Threading;                 //Mutex
using System.Security.AccessControl;    //MutexAccessRule
using System.Security.Principal;        //SecurityIdentifier

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    // get application GUID as defined in AssemblyInfo.cs
    string appGuid = ((GuidAttribute)Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetCustomAttributes(typeof(GuidAttribute), false).GetValue(0)).Value.ToString();

    // unique id for global mutex - Global prefix means it is global to the machine
    string mutexId = string.Format( "Global\\{{{0}}}", appGuid );

    bool createdNew;
        // edited by Jeremy Wiebe to add example of setting up security for multi-user usage
        // edited by 'Marc' to work also on localized systems (don't use just "Everyone") 
        var allowEveryoneRule = new MutexAccessRule(new SecurityIdentifier(WellKnownSidType.WorldSid, null), MutexRights.FullControl, AccessControlType.Allow);
        var securitySettings = new MutexSecurity();
        securitySettings.AddAccessRule(allowEveryoneRule);

        using (var mutex = new Mutex(false, mutexId, out createdNew, securitySettings))
        {

        // edited by acidzombie24
        var hasHandle = false;
        try
        {
            try
            {
                // note, you may want to time out here instead of waiting forever
                // edited by acidzombie24
                // mutex.WaitOne(Timeout.Infinite, false);
                hasHandle = mutex.WaitOne(5000, false);
                if (hasHandle == false)
                    throw new TimeoutException("Timeout waiting for exclusive access");
            }
            catch (AbandonedMutexException)
            {
                // Log the fact the mutex was abandoned in another process, it will still get aquired
                hasHandle = true;
            }

            // Perform your work here.
        }
        finally
        {
            // edited by acidzombie24, added if statemnet
            if(hasHandle)
                mutex.ReleaseMutex();
        }
    }
}