I have a script that runs every 15 minutes but sometimes if the box is busy it hangs and the next process will start before the first one is finished creating a snowball effect.
I had recently the same question and found from above that kill -0 is best for my case:
echo "Starting process..."
run-process > $OUTPUT &
pid=$!
echo "Process started pid=$pid"
while true; do
kill -0 $pid 2> /dev/null || { echo "Process exit detected"; break; }
sleep 1
done
echo "Done."
To expand on what @bgy says, the safe atomic way to create a lock file if it doesn't exist yet, and fail if it doesn't, is to create a temp file, then hard link it to the standard lock file. This protects against another process creating the file in between you testing for it and you creating it.
Here is the lock file code from my hourly backup script:
echo $$ > /tmp/lock.$$
if ! ln /tmp/lock.$$ /tmp/lock ; then
echo "previous backup in process"
rm /tmp/lock.$$
exit
fi
Don't forget to delete both the lock file and the temp file when you're done, even if you exit early through an error.
For a method that does not suffer from parsing bugs and race conditions, check out:
You can use pidof -x
if you know the process name, or kill -0
if you know the PID.
Example:
if pidof -x vim > /dev/null
then
echo "Vim already running"
exit 1
fi
pgrep -f yourscript >/dev/null && exit
This is how I do it in one of my cron jobs
lockfile=~/myproc.lock
minutes=60
if [ -f "$lockfile" ]
then
filestr=`find $lockfile -mmin +$minutes -print`
if [ "$filestr" = "" ]; then
echo "Lockfile is not older than $minutes minutes! Another $0 running. Exiting ..."
exit 1
else
echo "Lockfile is older than $minutes minutes, ignoring it!"
rm $lockfile
fi
fi
echo "Creating lockfile $lockfile"
touch $lockfile
and delete the lock file at the end of the script
echo "Removing lock $lockfile ..."
rm $lockfile