Check if bash script already running except itself with arguments - bash

So I've looked up other questions and answers for this and as you can imagine, there are lots of ways to find this. However, my situation is kind of different.
I'm able to check whether a bash script is already running or not and I want to kill the script if it's already running.
The problem is that with the below code, -since I'm running this within the same script- the script kills itself too because it sees a script already running.
result=`ps aux | grep -i "myscript.sh" | grep -v "grep" | wc -l`
if [ $result -ge 1 ]
then
echo "script is running"
else
echo "script is not running"
fi
So how can I check if a script is already running besides it's own self and kill itself if there's another instance of the same script is running, else, continue without killing itself.
I thought I could combine the above code with $$ command to find the script's own PID and differentiate them this way but I'm not sure how to do that.
Also a side note, my script can be run multiple times at the same time within the same machine but with different arguments and that's fine. I only need to identify if script is already running with the same arguments.

pid=$(pgrep myscript.sh | grep -x -v $$)
# filter non-existent pids
pid=$(<<<"$pid" xargs -n1 sh -c 'kill -0 "$1" 2>/dev/null && echo "$1"' --)
if [ -n "$pid" ]; then
echo "Other script is running with pid $pid"
echo "Killing him!"
kill $pid
fi
pgrep lists the pids that match the name myscript.sh. From the list we filter current $$ shell with grep -v. It the result is non-empty, then you could kill the other pid.
Without the xargs, it would work, but the pgrep myscript.sh will pick up the temporary pid created for command substitution or the pipe. So the pid will never be empty and the kill will always execute complaining about the non-existent process. To do that, for each pid in pids, I check if the pid exists with kill -0. If it does, then it is outputted, effectively filtering all nonexistent pids.
You could also use a normal for loop to filter the pids:
# filter non-existent pids
pid=$(
for i in $pid; do
if kill -0 "$i" 2>/dev/null; then
echo "$i"
fi
done
)
Alternatively, you could use flock to lock the file and use lsof to list current open files with filtering the current one. As it is now, I think it will kill also editors that are editing the file and such. I believe the lsof output could be better filtered to accommodate this.
if [ "${FLOCKER}" != "$0" ]; then
pids=$(lsof -p "^$$" -- ./myscript.sh | awk 'NR>1{print $2}')
if [ -n "$pids" ]; then
echo "Other processes with $(echo $pids) found. Killing them"
kill $pids
fi
exec env FLOCKER="$0" flock -en "$0" "$0" "$#"
fi

I would go with either of 2 ways to solve this problem.
1st solution: Create a watchdog file lets say a .lck file kind of on a location before starting the script's execution(Make sure we use trap etc commands in case script is aborted so that .lck file should be removed) AND remove it once execution of script is completed successfully.
Example script for 1st solution: This is just an example a test one. We need to take care of interruptions in the script, lets say script got interrupted by a command or etc then we could use trap in it too, since at that time it would have not been completed but you may need to kick it off again(since last time it was not completed).
cat file.ksh
#!/bin/bash
PWD=`pwd`
watchdog_file="$PWD/script.lck"
if [[ -f "$watchdog_file" ]]
then
echo "Please wait script is still running, exiting from script now.."
exit 1;
else
touch $watchdog_file
fi
while true
do
echo "singh" > test1
done
if [[ -f "$watchdog_file" ]]
then
rm "$watchdog_file"
fi
2nd solution: Take pid of current running shell using $$ save it in a file. Then check if that process is still running come out of script if NOT running then move on to run statements in script.

Related

Is there a command, or programmatic way I can use to extract PIDs, and put them in a space-separated list? [duplicate]

I'm writing a bash script, which does several things.
In the beginning it starts several monitor scripts, each of them runs some other tools.
At the end of my main script, I would like to kill all things that were spawned from my shell.
So, it might looks like this:
#!/bin/bash
some_monitor1.sh &
some_monitor2.sh &
some_monitor3.sh &
do_some_work
...
kill_subprocesses
The thing is that most of these monitors spawn their own subprocesses, so doing (for example): killall some_monitor1.sh will not always help.
Any other way to handle this situation?
pkill -P $$
will fit (just kills it's own descendants)
EDIT: I got a downvote, don't know why. Anyway here is the help of -P
-P, --parent ppid,...
Only match processes whose parent process ID is listed.
and $$ is the process id of the script itself
After starting each child process, you can get its id with
ID=$!
Then you can use the stored PIDs to find and kill all grandchild etc. processes as described here or here.
If you use a negative PID with kill it will kill a process group. Example:
kill -- -1234
Extending pihentagy's answer to recursively kill all descendants (not just children):
kill_descendant_processes() {
local pid="$1"
local and_self="${2:-false}"
if children="$(pgrep -P "$pid")"; then
for child in $children; do
kill_descendant_processes "$child" true
done
fi
if [[ "$and_self" == true ]]; then
kill -9 "$pid"
fi
}
Now
kill_descendant_processes $$
will kill descedants of the current script/shell.
(Tested on Mac OS 10.9.5. Only depends on pgrep and kill)
kill $(jobs -p)
Rhys Ulerich's suggestion:
Caveat a race condition, using [code below] accomplishes what Jürgen suggested without causing an error when no jobs exist
[[ -z "$(jobs -p)" ]] || kill $(jobs -p)
pkill with optioin "-P" should help:
pkill -P $(pgrep some_monitor1.sh)
from man page:
-P ppid,...
Only match processes whose parent process ID is listed.
There are some discussions on linuxquests.org, please check:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/programming-9/use-only-one-kill-to-kill-father-and-child-processes-665753/
I like the following straightforward approach: start the subprocesses with an environment variable with some name/value and use this to kill the subprocesses later. Most convenient is to use the process-id of the running bash script i.e. $$. This also works when subprocesses starts another subprocesses as the environment is inherited.
So start the subprocesses like this:
MY_SCRIPT_TOKEN=$$ some_monitor1.sh &
MY_SCRIPT_TOKEN=$$ some_monitor2.sh &
And afterwards kill them like this:
ps -Eef | grep "MY_SCRIPT_TOKEN=$$" | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill
Similar to above, just a minor tweak to kill all processes indicated by ps:
ps -o pid= | tail -n +2 | xargs kill -9
Perhaps sloppy / fragile, but seemed to work at first blush. Relies on fact that current process ($$) tends to be first line.
Description of commands, in order:
Print PIDs for processes in current terminal, excl. header column
Start from Line 2 (excl. current terminal's shell)
Kill those procs
I've incorporated a bunch of the suggestions from the answers here into a single function. It gives time for processes to exit, murders them if they take too long, and doesn't have to grep through output (eg, via ps)
#!/bin/bash
# This function will kill all sub jobs.
function KillJobs() {
[[ -z "$(jobs -p)" ]] && return # no jobs to kill
local SIG="INT" # default to a gentle goodbye
[[ ! -z "$1" ]] && SIG="$1" # optionally send a different signal
# my version of 'kill' doesn't seem to understand `kill -- -${PID}`
#jobs -p | xargs -I%% kill -s "$SIG" -- -%% # kill each job's processes group
jobs -p | xargs kill -s "$SIG" # kill each job's processes group
## give the processes a moment to die, before forcing them to.
[[ "$SIG" != "KILL" ]] && {
sleep 0.2
KillJobs "KILL"
}
}
I also tried to get a variation working with pkill, but on my system (xubuntu 21.10) it does absolutely nothing.
#!/bin/bash
# This function doesn't seem to work.
function KillChildren() {
local SIG="INT" # default to a gentle goodbye
[[ ! -z "$1" ]] && SIG="$1" # optionally send a different signal
pkill --signal "$SIG" -P $$ # kill descendent's and their processes groups
[[ "$SIG" != "KILL" ]] && {
# give them a moment to die before we force them to.
sleep 0.2
KillChildren "KILL" ;
}
}

Bash script that kills other instances of itself if they're running

So, I want to make a bash script, and I'm going to have it run on boot, but I'd like to update the script if I need to and run it without a reboot, so what I want to do is make the script check if there is any other instances of it running when it is loaded, and terninate any instances of the script other than itself. I want it to check instances of bash and get the path of the scripts that are being ran and kill any instances of scripts that have the same path name as it's own. How can I do this?
Example: If I am in directory /foo/bar and I run the script ../tball/script.sh, it will kill any instances of bash that are running the script /foo/tball/script.sh if they exist.
Here's the basis
kill_others() {
local mypid=$$ # capture this run's pid
declare pids=($(pgrep -f ${0##*/} # get all the pids running this script
for pid in ${pids[#]/$mypid/}; do # cycle through all pids except this one
kill $pid # kill the other pids
sleep 1 # give time to complete
done
}
declare -i count=0
while [[ $(pgrep -f ${0##*/}|wc -l) -gt 1 ]]; do
kill_outhers
((++count))
if [[ $count -gt 10 ]]; then
echo "ERROR: can't kill pids" >&2
exit 1
fi
done
The best approach is a file containing the PID of the process in a volatile filesystem like this:
echo $$ > /run/script.pid
You could refine it further by checking if that PID exists with:
if [ ! -d /proc/$(< /run/script.pid) ] ; then
rm /run/script.pid
fi
In your script you should have something like this, to remove the file on exit or if it receives a signal that kills the process:
trap "rm -f /run/script.pid" EXIT INT QUIT TERM
EDIT: Or you could append the PID to a well known pathname and kill all instances of the script with something like this before saving the PID:
kill $(< /run/script.pid) ; sleep 10 ; kill -9 $(< /run/script.pid)

How to check if another instance of my shell script is running

GNU bash, version 1.14.7(1)
I have a script is called "abc.sh"
I have to check this from abc.sh script only...
inside it I have written following statement
status=`ps -efww | grep -w "abc.sh" | grep -v grep | grep -v $$ | awk '{ print $2 }'`
if [ ! -z "$status" ]; then
echo "[`date`] : abc.sh : Process is already running"
exit 1;
fi
I know it's wrong because every time it exits as it found its own process in 'ps'
how to solve it?
how can I check that script is already running or not from that script only ?
An easier way to check for a process already executing is the pidof command.
if pidof -x "abc.sh" >/dev/null; then
echo "Process already running"
fi
Alternatively, have your script create a PID file when it executes. It's then a simple exercise of checking for the presence of the PID file to determine if the process is already running.
#!/bin/bash
# abc.sh
mypidfile=/var/run/abc.sh.pid
# Could add check for existence of mypidfile here if interlock is
# needed in the shell script itself.
# Ensure PID file is removed on program exit.
trap "rm -f -- '$mypidfile'" EXIT
# Create a file with current PID to indicate that process is running.
echo $$ > "$mypidfile"
...
Update:
The question has now changed to check from the script itself. In this case, we would expect to always see at least one abc.sh running. If there is more than one abc.sh, then we know that process is still running. I'd still suggest use of the pidof command which would return 2 PIDs if the process was already running. You could use grep to filter out the current PID, loop in the shell or even revert to just counting PIDs with wc to detect multiple processes.
Here's an example:
#!/bin/bash
for pid in $(pidof -x abc.sh); do
if [ $pid != $$ ]; then
echo "[$(date)] : abc.sh : Process is already running with PID $pid"
exit 1
fi
done
I you want the "pidof" method, here is the trick:
if pidof -o %PPID -x "abc.sh">/dev/null; then
echo "Process already running"
fi
Where the -o %PPID parameter tells to omit the pid of the calling shell or shell script. More info in the pidof man page.
Here's one trick you'll see in various places:
status=`ps -efww | grep -w "[a]bc.sh" | awk -vpid=$$ '$2 != pid { print $2 }'`
if [ ! -z "$status" ]; then
echo "[`date`] : abc.sh : Process is already running"
exit 1;
fi
The brackets around the [a] (or pick a different letter) prevent grep from finding itself. This makes the grep -v grep bit unnecessary. I also removed the grep -v $$ and fixed the awk part to accomplish the same thing.
Working solution:
if [[ `pgrep -f $0` != "$$" ]]; then
echo "Another instance of shell already exist! Exiting"
exit
fi
Edit: I checked out some comments lately, so I tried attempting same with some debugging. I will also will explain it.
Explanation:
$0 gives filename of your running script.
$$ gives PID of your running script.
pgrep searches for process by name and returns PID.
pgrep -f $0 searches by filename, $0 being the current bash script filename and returns its PID.
So, pgrep checks if your script PID ($0) is equal to current running script ($$). If yes, then the script runs normally. If no, that means there's another PID with same filename running, so it exits. The reason I used pgrep -f $0 instead of pgrep bash is that you could have multiple instances of bash running and thus returns multiple PIDs. By filename, its returns only single PID.
Exceptions:
Use bash script.sh not ./script.sh as it doesn't work unless you have shebang.
Fix: Use #!/bin/bash shebang at beginning.
The reason sudo doesn't work is that it returns pgrep returns PID of both bash and sudo, instead of returning of of bash.
Fix:
#!/bin/bash
pseudopid="`pgrep -f $0 -l`"
actualpid="$(echo "$pseudopid" | grep -v 'sudo' | awk -F ' ' '{print $1}')"
if [[ `echo $actualpid` != "$$" ]]; then
echo "Another instance of shell already exist! Exiting"
exit
fi
while true
do
echo "Running"
sleep 100
done
The script exits even if the script isn't running. That is because there's another process having that same filename. Try doing vim script.sh then running bash script.sh, it'll fail because of vim being opened with same filename
Fix: Use unique filename.
Someone please shoot me down if I'm wrong here
I understand that the mkdir operation is atomic, so you could create a lock directory
#!/bin/sh
lockdir=/tmp/AXgqg0lsoeykp9L9NZjIuaqvu7ANILL4foeqzpJcTs3YkwtiJ0
mkdir $lockdir || {
echo "lock directory exists. exiting"
exit 1
}
# take pains to remove lock directory when script terminates
trap "rmdir $lockdir" EXIT INT KILL TERM
# rest of script here
Here's how I do it in a bash script:
if ps ax | grep $0 | grep -v $$ | grep bash | grep -v grep
then
echo "The script is already running."
exit 1
fi
This allows me to use this snippet for any bash script. I needed to grep bash because when using with cron, it creates another process that executes it using /bin/sh.
I find the answer from #Austin Phillips is spot on. One small improvement I'd do is to add -o (to ignore the pid of the script itself) and match for the script with basename (ie same code can be put into any script):
if pidof -x "`basename $0`" -o $$ >/dev/null; then
echo "Process already running"
fi
pidof wasn't working for me so I searched some more and came across pgrep
for pid in $(pgrep -f my_script.sh); do
if [ $pid != $$ ]; then
echo "[$(date)] : my_script.sh : Process is already running with PID $pid"
exit 1
else
echo "Running with PID $pid"
fi
done
Taken in part from answers above and https://askubuntu.com/a/803106/802276
Use the PS command in a little different way to ignore child process as well:
ps -eaf | grep -v grep | grep $PROCESS | grep -v $$
I create a temporary file during execution.
This is how I do it:
#!/bin/sh
# check if lock file exists
if [ -e /tmp/script.lock ]; then
echo "script is already running"
else
# create a lock file
touch /tmp/script.lock
echo "run script..."
#remove lock file
rm /tmp/script.lock
fi
I have found that using backticks to capture command output into a variable, adversly, yeilds one too many ps aux results, e.g. for a single running instance of abc.sh:
ps aux | grep -w "abc.sh" | grep -v grep | wc -l
returns "1". However,
count=`ps aux | grep -w "abc.sh" | grep -v grep | wc -l`
echo $count
returns "2"
Seems like using the backtick construction somehow temporarily creates another process. Could be the reason why the topicstarter could not make this work. Just need to decrement the $count var.
I didn't want to hardcode abc.sh in the check, so I used the following:
MY_SCRIPT_NAME=`basename "$0"`
if pidof -o %PPID -x $MY_SCRIPT_NAME > /dev/null; then
echo "$MY_SCRIPT_NAME already running; exiting"
exit 1
fi
This is compact and universal
# exit if another instance of this script is running
for pid in $(pidof -x `basename $0`); do
[ $pid != $$ ] && { exit 1; }
done
The cleanest fastest way:
processAlreadyRunning () {
process="$(basename "${0}")"
pidof -x "${process}" -o $$ &>/dev/null
}
For other variants (like AIX) that don't have pidof or pgrep. Reliability is greatly improved by getting a "static" view of the process table as opposed to piping it directly to grep. Setting IFS to null will preserve the carriage returns when the ps output is assigned to a variable.
#!/bin/ksh93
IFS=""
script_name=$(basename $0)
PSOUT="$(ps ax)"
ANY_TEXT=$(echo $PSOUT | grep $script_name | grep -vw $$ | grep $(basename $SHELL))
if [[ $ANY_TEXT ]]; then
echo "Process is already running"
echo "$ANY_TEXT"
exit
fi
[ "$(pidof -x $(basename $0))" != $$ ] && exit
https://github.com/x-zhao/exit-if-bash-script-already-running/blob/master/script.sh

How to kill all subprocesses of shell?

I'm writing a bash script, which does several things.
In the beginning it starts several monitor scripts, each of them runs some other tools.
At the end of my main script, I would like to kill all things that were spawned from my shell.
So, it might looks like this:
#!/bin/bash
some_monitor1.sh &
some_monitor2.sh &
some_monitor3.sh &
do_some_work
...
kill_subprocesses
The thing is that most of these monitors spawn their own subprocesses, so doing (for example): killall some_monitor1.sh will not always help.
Any other way to handle this situation?
pkill -P $$
will fit (just kills its own descendants)
And here is the help of -P
-P, --parent ppid,...
Only match processes whose parent process ID is listed.
and $$ is the process id of the script itself
After starting each child process, you can get its id with
ID=$!
Then you can use the stored PIDs to find and kill all grandchild etc. processes as described here or here.
If you use a negative PID with kill it will kill a process group. Example:
kill -- -1234
Extending pihentagy's answer to recursively kill all descendants (not just children):
kill_descendant_processes() {
local pid="$1"
local and_self="${2:-false}"
if children="$(pgrep -P "$pid")"; then
for child in $children; do
kill_descendant_processes "$child" true
done
fi
if [[ "$and_self" == true ]]; then
kill -9 "$pid"
fi
}
Now
kill_descendant_processes $$
will kill descedants of the current script/shell.
(Tested on Mac OS 10.9.5. Only depends on pgrep and kill)
kill $(jobs -p)
Rhys Ulerich's suggestion:
Caveat a race condition, using [code below] accomplishes what Jürgen suggested without causing an error when no jobs exist
[[ -z "$(jobs -p)" ]] || kill $(jobs -p)
pkill with optioin "-P" should help:
pkill -P $(pgrep some_monitor1.sh)
from man page:
-P ppid,...
Only match processes whose parent process ID is listed.
There are some discussions on linuxquests.org, please check:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/programming-9/use-only-one-kill-to-kill-father-and-child-processes-665753/
I like the following straightforward approach: start the subprocesses with an environment variable with some name/value and use this to kill the subprocesses later. Most convenient is to use the process-id of the running bash script i.e. $$. This also works when subprocesses starts another subprocesses as the environment is inherited.
So start the subprocesses like this:
MY_SCRIPT_TOKEN=$$ some_monitor1.sh &
MY_SCRIPT_TOKEN=$$ some_monitor2.sh &
And afterwards kill them like this:
ps -Eef | grep "MY_SCRIPT_TOKEN=$$" | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill
Similar to above, just a minor tweak to kill all processes indicated by ps:
ps -o pid= | tail -n +2 | xargs kill -9
Perhaps sloppy / fragile, but seemed to work at first blush. Relies on fact that current process ($$) tends to be first line.
Description of commands, in order:
Print PIDs for processes in current terminal, excl. header column
Start from Line 2 (excl. current terminal's shell)
Kill those procs
I've incorporated a bunch of the suggestions from the answers here into a single function. It gives time for processes to exit, murders them if they take too long, and doesn't have to grep through output (eg, via ps)
#!/bin/bash
# This function will kill all sub jobs.
function KillJobs() {
[[ -z "$(jobs -p)" ]] && return # no jobs to kill
local SIG="INT" # default to a gentle goodbye
[[ ! -z "$1" ]] && SIG="$1" # optionally send a different signal
# my version of 'kill' doesn't seem to understand `kill -- -${PID}`
#jobs -p | xargs -I%% kill -s "$SIG" -- -%% # kill each job's processes group
jobs -p | xargs kill -s "$SIG" # kill each job's processes group
## give the processes a moment to die, before forcing them to.
[[ "$SIG" != "KILL" ]] && {
sleep 0.2
KillJobs "KILL"
}
}
I also tried to get a variation working with pkill, but on my system (xubuntu 21.10) it does absolutely nothing.
#!/bin/bash
# This function doesn't seem to work.
function KillChildren() {
local SIG="INT" # default to a gentle goodbye
[[ ! -z "$1" ]] && SIG="$1" # optionally send a different signal
pkill --signal "$SIG" -P $$ # kill descendent's and their processes groups
[[ "$SIG" != "KILL" ]] && {
# give them a moment to die before we force them to.
sleep 0.2
KillChildren "KILL" ;
}
}

Check if Mac process is running using Bash by process name

How do you check if a process on Mac OS X is running using the process's name in a Bash script?
I am trying to write a Bash script that will restart a process if it has stopped but do nothing if it is still running.
Parsing this:
ps aux | grep -v grep | grep -c [-i] $ProcessName
...is probably your best bet.
ps aux lists all the currently running processes including the Bash script itself which is parsed out by grep -v grep with advice from Jacob (in comments) and grep -c [-i] $ProcessName returns the optionally case-insensitive integer number of processes with integer return suggested by Sebastian.
Here's a short script that does what you're after:
#!/bin/bash
PROCESS=myapp
number=$(ps aux | grep -v grep | grep -ci $PROCESS)
if [ $number -gt 0 ]
then
echo Running;
fi
EDIT: I initially included a -i flag to grep to make it case insensitive; I did this because the example program I tried was python, which on Mac OS X runs as Python -- if you know your application's case exactly, the -i is not necessary.
The advantage of this approach is that it scales with you -- in the future, if you need to make sure, say, five instances of your application are running, you're already counting. The only caveat is if another application has your program's name in its command line, it might come up -- regular expressions to grep will resolve that issue, if you're crafty (and run into this).
Research the Darwin man pages for ps, grep, and wc.
A shorter solution:
if pgrep $PROCESS_NAME; then
echo 'Running';
fi
Explanation:
pgrep exits with 0 if there is a process matching $PROCESS_NAME running, otherwise it exist with 1.
if checks the exit code of pgrep, and, as far as exit codes go, 0 is success.
Another way is to use (abuse?) the -d option of the killall command. The -d options won't actually kill the process, but instead print what will be done. It will also exit with status 0 if it finds a matching process, or 1 if it does not. Putting this together:
#!/bin/bash
`/usr/bin/killall -d "$1" &> /dev/null`
let "RUNNING = ! $?" # this simply does a boolean 'not' on the return code
echo $RUNNING
To give credit where its due, I originally pulled this technique from a script in the iTunes installer.
This simple command will do the trick. The brackets around the process name prevent the grep command from showing in the process list. Note there is no space after the comma. There may be some portability issues as ps on some unix systems may require a dash before the options:
ps axo pid,command | grep "[S]kype"
The advantage is that you can use the results in an if statement like this:'
if [[ ! $(ps axo pid,command | grep "[i]Tunes.app") ]]; then
open -a iTunes
fi
Or if you prefer this style:
[[ ! $(ps axo pid,command | grep "[S]kype") ]] && open -a Skype || echo "Skype is up"
Another advantage is that you can get the pid by adding a pipe to awk '{print $1}'.
echo "iTunes pid: $(ps axo pid,command | grep "[i]Tunes.app" | awk '{print $1}')"
You can use either killall or kill, depending on if you are trying to find the task by PID or by name.
By Name:
if ! killall -s -0 $PROCESS_NAME >/dev/null 2>&1; then
# Restart failed app, or do whatever you need to prepare for starting the app.
else
at -f $0 +30seconds # If you don't have this on cron, you can use /usr/bin/at
fi
By PID:
if ! kill -0 $PID 2>/dev/null; then
# Restart app, do the needful.
else
at -f $0 +30seconds
fi
If you look at the OSX Manual you will see a different set of process management commands; since it's not the linux kernel, it makes sense that they would manage processes differently.
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/killall.1.html
A sample output from my terminal (striking out the user and hostname, of course):
user#localhost:~$ kill -0 782 # This was my old, stale SSH Agent.
bash: kill: (782) - No such process
user#localhost:~$ echo $?
1
user#localhost:~$ kill -0 813 # This is my new SSH agent, I only just created.
user#localhost:~$ echo $?
0
The return code from a kill -0 will always result in a safe way to check if the process is running, because -0 sends no signal that will ever be handled by an application. It won't kill the application, and "kill" is only called "kill" because it's usually used to stop an application.
When you look at the interfaces it uses in the source, you'll see that it's actually interacting with the process table directly (and not grepping a potentially loaded output from ps), and just sending a signal to an application. Some signals indicate the application should shutdown or stop, while other signals tell it to restart services, or re-read configuration, or re-open file descriptors to log files that have been recently rotated. There are a plethora of things that "kill" and "killall" can do that doesn't terminate the application, and it's used regularly to simply send a signal to the application.
I lack the reputation to comment on the killall answer above, but there's killall -s for doing it without sending any signals:
killall -s "$PROCESSNAME" &> /dev/null
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
echo "$PROCESSNAME is running"
# if you also need the PID:
PID=`killall -s "$PROCESSNAME" | awk '{print $3}'`
echo "it's PID is $PID"
fi
It has for sure!
pgrep, pkill and pfind for OpenBSD and Darwin (Mac OS X)
http://proctools.sourceforge.net
(also available via MacPorts: port info proctools )
pidof by nightproductions.net
I've extended a pidof script found on the net to use regular expressions (usually substrings) and be case insensitive
#!/bin/sh
ps axc |awk "BEGIN{ n=tolower(\"$1\")}\
tolower(\$5) ~n {print \$1}";
just create a script named "pidof" with this content, and put it in you path, i.e. in one of the dirs in
echo $PATH
and make it executable (maybe using sudo)
chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/pidof
and use it like this, of course
kill -9 `pidof pyth`
does Mac have pidof? ...
if pidof $processname >/dev/null ; then echo $processname is running ; fi
Perhaps too late for the OP but this may help others who find this thread.
The following modification of the amrox theme above works well for restarting applications on my OS X:
killall -d TextEdit &> /dev/null && killall TextEdit &> /dev/null; open -a TextEdit
I use the following AppleScript to update and restart daemons:
tell application "System Events" to set pwd to POSIX path of container of (path to me)
do shell script "launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/time-test.plist; cp -f " & quoted form of pwd & "/time-test.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons; launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/time-test.plist" with administrator privileges
It assumes the original or updated plist file is in the same directory as the AppleScript.

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