I have this line of code:
{ time cp $PWD/my_file $PWD/new_file ; } 2> my_log.log
I need to know how long it takes to execute the 'cp' command and I also need to get the PID of the 'cp'. I just want to print the PID of the 'cp' process and get the following in the my_log.log file:
<output of time>
I have tried PID=$! but this does not provide PID of the cp process.
First, you need to send your (timed) cp command to the background with a trailing &, so you can inspect the running processes after launching it.
(I suspect you're already doing this, but it's not currently reflected in the question).
$!, the special variable that contains the PID of the most recently launched background job, in this case reflects the subshell that runs the time command, so we know that it is the parent process of the cp command. To get the (one and only, in this case) child process:
If your platform has the nonstandard pgrep utility (comes with many Linux distros and BSD/macOS platforms), use:
pgrep -P $!
Otherwise, use the following POSIX-compliant approach:
ps -o pid=,ppid= | awk -v ppid=$! '$2 == ppid { print $1 }'
To put it all together, using prgep for convenience:
# Send the timed `cp` command to the background with a trailing `&`
{ time cp "$PWD/my_file" "$PWD/new_file"; } 2> my_log.log &
# Get the `cp` comand's PID via its parent PID, $!
cpPid=$(pgrep -P $!)
To know approximately how long takes cp command you can check new file size
size=$(stat -c %s "${old_file}")
cp "${old_file}" "${new_file}" &
cp_pid=$!
while kill -0 ${cp_pid}; do
cpsize=$(stat -c %s "${new_file}")
echo elapsed time $(ps -p${cp_pid} -oetime=)
echo $((100*cpsize/size)) % done so far..
sleep 3
done
EDIT: following comment stat -c %s "${file}" can be replaced by du "${file}" it's POSIX and more suitable command (see man page).
The simplest one I can think of is
pgrep cp
OK -- from the comments: "Contents of my_log.log will be PID of the cp command followed by the timing output of the cp command":
( time cp $PWD/my_file $PWD/new_file & 2>&1; echo $! ) > my_log.log 2>&1
First, you need to use /usr/bin/time explicitly, and pass the options to append to an output file. Then, use pgrep on the name of the file you are copying (cp will get too many hits):
/usr/bin/time --output=my_log.log --append cp $PWD/my_file $PWD/new_file & pgrep -f my_file > my_log.log
You may want to change the output format, because it's kinda ugly:
18400
0.00user 0.30system 0:02.43elapsed 12%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2520maxresident)k
0inputs+496424outputs (0major+141minor)pagefaults 0swaps
Following what written in one of your comment above... the following is a proper answer:
The following code (just an example):
time (sleep 10 & echo -n "$!"; wait)
will return something like:
30406
real 0m10.009s
user 0m0.004s
sys 0m0.005s
In your case:
time (cp $PWD/old_file $PWD/new_file & echo -n "$!"; wait) &> my_log.log
will do the job.
I find this solution quite elegant since it's a "one liner" despite the "completely negligible overhead" you got in the timing (the timing will be related to the entire subshell (also the echo and the wait). That the overhead is negligible is evident from the result of the sleep command.
The &> redirect stdout and stderr to the same file (so you do not need to specify the 1>&2).
Pay attention that doing
(time sleep 10 & echo -n "$!")
You will get the pid of the time process not sleep or cp in your case.
Related
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.
Is there any builtin feature in Bash to wait for a process to finish?
The wait command only allows one to wait for child processes to finish.
I would like to know if there is any way to wait for any process to finish before proceeding in any script.
A mechanical way to do this is as follows but I would like to know if there is any builtin feature in Bash.
while ps -p `cat $PID_FILE` > /dev/null; do sleep 1; done
To wait for any process to finish
Linux (doesn't work on Alpine, where ash doesn't support tail --pid):
tail --pid=$pid -f /dev/null
Darwin (requires that $pid has open files):
lsof -p $pid +r 1 &>/dev/null
With timeout (seconds)
Linux:
timeout $timeout tail --pid=$pid -f /dev/null
Darwin (requires that $pid has open files):
lsof -p $pid +r 1m%s -t | grep -qm1 $(date -v+${timeout}S +%s 2>/dev/null || echo INF)
There's no builtin. Use kill -0 in a loop for a workable solution:
anywait(){
for pid in "$#"; do
while kill -0 "$pid"; do
sleep 0.5
done
done
}
Or as a simpler oneliner for easy one time usage:
while kill -0 PIDS 2> /dev/null; do sleep 1; done;
As noted by several commentators, if you want to wait for processes that you do not have the privilege to send signals to, you have find some other way to detect if the process is running to replace the kill -0 $pid call. On Linux, test -d "/proc/$pid" works, on other systems you might have to use pgrep (if available) or something like ps | grep "^$pid ".
I found "kill -0" does not work if the process is owned by root (or other), so I used pgrep and came up with:
while pgrep -u root process_name > /dev/null; do sleep 1; done
This would have the disadvantage of probably matching zombie processes.
This bash script loop ends if the process does not exist, or it's a zombie.
PID=<pid to watch>
while s=`ps -p $PID -o s=` && [[ "$s" && "$s" != 'Z' ]]; do
sleep 1
done
EDIT: The above script was given below by Rockallite. Thanks!
My orignal answer below works for Linux, relying on procfs i.e. /proc/. I don't know its portability:
while [[ ( -d /proc/$PID ) && ( -z `grep zombie /proc/$PID/status` ) ]]; do
sleep 1
done
It's not limited to shell, but OS's themselves do not have system calls to watch non-child process termination.
FreeBSD and Solaris have this handy pwait(1) utility, which does exactly, what you want.
I believe, other modern OSes also have the necessary system calls too (MacOS, for example, implements BSD's kqueue), but not all make it available from command-line.
From the bash manpage
wait [n ...]
Wait for each specified process and return its termination status
Each n may be a process ID or a job specification; if a
job spec is given, all processes in that job's pipeline are
waited for. If n is not given, all currently active child processes
are waited for, and the return status is zero. If n
specifies a non-existent process or job, the return status is
127. Otherwise, the return status is the exit status of the
last process or job waited for.
Okay, so it seems the answer is -- no, there is no built in tool.
After setting /proc/sys/kernel/yama/ptrace_scope to 0, it is possible to use the strace program. Further switches can be used to make it silent, so that it really waits passively:
strace -qqe '' -p <PID>
All these solutions are tested in Ubuntu 14.04:
Solution 1 (by using ps command):
Just to add up to Pierz answer, I would suggest:
while ps axg | grep -vw grep | grep -w process_name > /dev/null; do sleep 1; done
In this case, grep -vw grep ensures that grep matches only process_name and not grep itself. It has the advantage of supporting the cases where the process_name is not at the end of a line at ps axg.
Solution 2 (by using top command and process name):
while [[ $(awk '$12=="process_name" {print $0}' <(top -n 1 -b)) ]]; do sleep 1; done
Replace process_name with the process name that appears in top -n 1 -b. Please keep the quotation marks.
To see the list of processes that you wait for them to be finished, you can run:
while : ; do p=$(awk '$12=="process_name" {print $0}' <(top -n 1 -b)); [[ $b ]] || break; echo $p; sleep 1; done
Solution 3 (by using top command and process ID):
while [[ $(awk '$1=="process_id" {print $0}' <(top -n 1 -b)) ]]; do sleep 1; done
Replace process_id with the process ID of your program.
Blocking solution
Use the wait in a loop, for waiting for terminate all processes:
function anywait()
{
for pid in "$#"
do
wait $pid
echo "Process $pid terminated"
done
echo 'All processes terminated'
}
This function will exits immediately, when all processes was terminated. This is the most efficient solution.
Non-blocking solution
Use the kill -0 in a loop, for waiting for terminate all processes + do anything between checks:
function anywait_w_status()
{
for pid in "$#"
do
while kill -0 "$pid"
do
echo "Process $pid still running..."
sleep 1
done
done
echo 'All processes terminated'
}
The reaction time decreased to sleep time, because have to prevent high CPU usage.
A realistic usage:
Waiting for terminate all processes + inform user about all running PIDs.
function anywait_w_status2()
{
while true
do
alive_pids=()
for pid in "$#"
do
kill -0 "$pid" 2>/dev/null \
&& alive_pids+="$pid "
done
if [ ${#alive_pids[#]} -eq 0 ]
then
break
fi
echo "Process(es) still running... ${alive_pids[#]}"
sleep 1
done
echo 'All processes terminated'
}
Notes
These functions getting PIDs via arguments by $# as BASH array.
Had the same issue, I solved the issue killing the process and then waiting for each process to finish using the PROC filesystem:
while [ -e /proc/${pid} ]; do sleep 0.1; done
There is no builtin feature to wait for any process to finish.
You could send kill -0 to any PID found, so you don't get puzzled by zombies and stuff that will still be visible in ps (while still retrieving the PID list using ps).
If you need to both kill a process and wait for it finish, this can be achieved with killall(1) (based on process names), and start-stop-daemon(8) (based on a pidfile).
To kill all processes matching someproc and wait for them to die:
killall someproc --wait # wait forever until matching processes die
timeout 10s killall someproc --wait # timeout after 10 seconds
(Unfortunately, there's no direct equivalent of --wait with kill for a specific pid).
To kill a process based on a pidfile /var/run/someproc.pid using signal SIGINT, while waiting for it to finish, with SIGKILL being sent after 20 seconds of timeout, use:
start-stop-daemon --stop --signal INT --retry 20 --pidfile /var/run/someproc.pid
Use inotifywait to monitor some file that gets closed, when your process terminates. Example (on Linux):
yourproc >logfile.log & disown
inotifywait -q -e close logfile.log
-e specifies the event to wait for, -q means minimal output only on termination. In this case it will be:
logfile.log CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE
A single wait command can be used to wait for multiple processes:
yourproc1 >logfile1.log & disown
yourproc2 >logfile2.log & disown
yourproc3 >logfile3.log & disown
inotifywait -q -e close logfile1.log logfile2.log logfile3.log
The output string of inotifywait will tell you, which process terminated. This only works with 'real' files, not with something in /proc/
Rauno Palosaari's solution for Timeout in Seconds Darwin, is an excellent workaround for a UNIX-like OS that does not have GNU tail (it is not specific to Darwin). But, depending on the age of the UNIX-like operating system, the command-line offered is more complex than necessary, and can fail:
lsof -p $pid +r 1m%s -t | grep -qm1 $(date -v+${timeout}S +%s 2>/dev/null || echo INF)
On at least one old UNIX, the lsof argument +r 1m%s fails (even for a superuser):
lsof: can't read kernel name list.
The m%s is an output format specification. A simpler post-processor does not require it. For example, the following command waits on PID 5959 for up to five seconds:
lsof -p 5959 +r 1 | awk '/^=/ { if (T++ >= 5) { exit 1 } }'
In this example, if PID 5959 exits of its own accord before the five seconds elapses, ${?} is 0. If not ${?} returns 1 after five seconds.
It may be worth expressly noting that in +r 1, the 1 is the poll interval (in seconds), so it may be changed to suit the situation.
On a system like OSX you might not have pgrep so you can try this appraoch, when looking for processes by name:
while ps axg | grep process_name$ > /dev/null; do sleep 1; done
The $ symbol at the end of the process name ensures that grep matches only process_name to the end of line in the ps output and not itself.
So I have a shell script that does some long operations, and when they do I want to just output a series of dots (.) until it's done, to show that it's running.
I'm using pkill to test that the process is running, and as long as it is it outputs another dot. This works very well for nearly every place I need it. However, one part of the process involves removing a directory, and that is where it breaks down.
Here is my code:
ERROR=$(rm -rf "$1" 2>&1 >/dev/null)
while pkill -0 rm; do
printf "."
sleep 1
done
printf "\n"
I'm using pkill to test the rm process, but when I do, this is the output I get:
pkill: signalling pid 192: Operation not permitted
pkill: signalling pid 326: Operation not permitted
.pkill: signalling pid 61: Operation not permitted
My script runs up until the dot-output code, including the folder deletion, but then it stops and just outputs those three lines over and over again until I forcibly kill the process.
Anyone have any ideas what's going on? I feel like it's not able to work with the rm operation, but I'm not sure.
Thanks in advance.
The problem is pkill is sending kill(PID, SIG_0) for the processes matched by Regex pattern rm. For some matched processes (shown by the PIDs), you don't have sufficient permission to send SIG_0 to get the process status.
You can use -x (--exact) option (no Regex) to match only process(es) with exact name rm (given there is no rm by other users running):
pkill -0 -x rm
or use pgrep
pgrep -x rm
Better mention your username:
pkill -0 -x -u username rm
pgrep -x -u username rm
Your script is not putting rm into the background, so when pkill is being run, presumably it's finding processes owned by other users and is not able to kill them because you cannot kill another user's process unless you are root.
Since you are spawning the process within the script, if you correctly background the rm then you can get the PID of the rm job from $! and use kill instead of pkill.
You should run the rm command and properly background it. The following untested code should do what you're trying to do:
rm -rf "$1" >/dev/null 2>&1 &
RMPID=$!
while kill -0 $RMPID 2>/dev/null; do
printf "."
sleep 1
done
printf "\n"
wait $RMPID
RESULT=$?
if (( $RESULT != 0 )); then
printf "Error when deleting $1\n"
exit 1
fi
You can read the bash documentation for more details on wait and $! and $?
Just a little question about timing programs on Linux: the time command allows to
measure the execution time of a program:
[ed#lbox200 ~]$ time sleep 1
real 0m1.004s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.004s
Which works fine. But if I try to redirect the output to a file, it fails.
[ed#lbox200 ~]$ time sleep 1 > time.txt
real 0m1.004s
user 0m0.001s
sys 0m0.004s
[ed#lbox200 ~]$ cat time.txt
[ed#lbox200 ~]$
I know there are other implementations of time with the option -o to write a file but
my question is about the command without those options.
Any suggestions ?
Try
{ time sleep 1 ; } 2> time.txt
which combines the STDERR of "time" and your command into time.txt
Or use
{ time sleep 1 2> sleep.stderr ; } 2> time.txt
which puts STDERR from "sleep" into the file "sleep.stderr" and only STDERR from "time" goes into "time.txt"
Simple. The GNU time utility has an option for that.
But you have to ensure that you are not using your shell's builtin time command, at least the bash builtin does not provide that option! That's why you need to give the full path of the time utility:
/usr/bin/time -o time.txt sleep 1
Wrap time and the command you are timing in a set of brackets.
For example, the following times ls and writes the result of ls and the results of the timing into outfile:
$ (time ls) > outfile 2>&1
Or, if you'd like to separate the output of the command from the captured output from time:
$ (time ls) > ls_results 2> time_results
If you care about the command's error output you can separate them like this while still using the built-in time command.
{ time your_command 2> command.err ; } 2> time.log
or
{ time your_command 2>1 ; } 2> time.log
As you see the command's errors go to a file (since stderr is used for time).
Unfortunately you can't send it to another handle (like 3>&2) since that will not exist anymore outside the {...}
That said, if you can use GNU time, just do what #Tim Ludwinski said.
\time -o time.log command
Since the output of 'time' command is error output, redirect it as standard output would be more intuitive to do further processing.
{ time sleep 1; } 2>&1 | cat > time.txt
If you are using GNU time instead of the bash built-in, try
time -o outfile command
(Note: GNU time formats a little differently than the bash built-in).
&>out time command >/dev/null
in your case
&>out time sleep 1 >/dev/null
then
cat out
I ended up using:
/usr/bin/time -ao output_file.txt -f "Operation took: %E" echo lol
Where "a" is append
Where "o" is proceeded by the file name to append to
Where "f" is format with a printf-like syntax
Where "%E" produces 0:00:00; hours:minutes:seconds
I had to invoke /usr/bin/time because the bash "time" was trampling it and doesn't have the same options
I was just trying to get output to file, not the same thing as OP
If you don't want to touch the original process' stdout and stderr, you can redirect stderr to file descriptor 3 and back:
$ { time { perl -le "print 'foo'; warn 'bar';" 2>&3; }; } 3>&2 2> time.out
foo
bar at -e line 1.
$ cat time.out
real 0m0.009s
user 0m0.004s
sys 0m0.000s
You could use that for a wrapper (e.g. for cronjobs) to monitor runtimes:
#!/bin/bash
echo "[$(date)]" "$#" >> /my/runtime.log
{ time { "$#" 2>&3; }; } 3>&2 2>> /my/runtime.log
#!/bin/bash
set -e
_onexit() {
[[ $TMPD ]] && rm -rf "$TMPD"
}
TMPD="$(mktemp -d)"
trap _onexit EXIT
_time_2() {
"$#" 2>&3
}
_time_1() {
time _time_2 "$#"
}
_time() {
declare time_label="$1"
shift
exec 3>&2
_time_1 "$#" 2>"$TMPD/timing.$time_label"
echo "time[$time_label]"
cat "$TMPD/timing.$time_label"
}
_time a _do_something
_time b _do_another_thing
_time c _finish_up
This has the benefit of not spawning sub shells, and the final pipeline has it's stderr restored to the real stderr.
If you are using csh you can use:
/usr/bin/time --output=outfile -p $SHELL -c 'your command'
For example:
/usr/bin/time --output=outtime.txt -p csh -c 'cat file'
If you want just the time in a shell variable then this works:
var=`{ time <command> ; } 2>&1 1>/dev/null`
Is there any builtin feature in Bash to wait for a process to finish?
The wait command only allows one to wait for child processes to finish.
I would like to know if there is any way to wait for any process to finish before proceeding in any script.
A mechanical way to do this is as follows but I would like to know if there is any builtin feature in Bash.
while ps -p `cat $PID_FILE` > /dev/null; do sleep 1; done
To wait for any process to finish
Linux (doesn't work on Alpine, where ash doesn't support tail --pid):
tail --pid=$pid -f /dev/null
Darwin (requires that $pid has open files):
lsof -p $pid +r 1 &>/dev/null
With timeout (seconds)
Linux:
timeout $timeout tail --pid=$pid -f /dev/null
Darwin (requires that $pid has open files):
lsof -p $pid +r 1m%s -t | grep -qm1 $(date -v+${timeout}S +%s 2>/dev/null || echo INF)
There's no builtin. Use kill -0 in a loop for a workable solution:
anywait(){
for pid in "$#"; do
while kill -0 "$pid"; do
sleep 0.5
done
done
}
Or as a simpler oneliner for easy one time usage:
while kill -0 PIDS 2> /dev/null; do sleep 1; done;
As noted by several commentators, if you want to wait for processes that you do not have the privilege to send signals to, you have find some other way to detect if the process is running to replace the kill -0 $pid call. On Linux, test -d "/proc/$pid" works, on other systems you might have to use pgrep (if available) or something like ps | grep "^$pid ".
I found "kill -0" does not work if the process is owned by root (or other), so I used pgrep and came up with:
while pgrep -u root process_name > /dev/null; do sleep 1; done
This would have the disadvantage of probably matching zombie processes.
This bash script loop ends if the process does not exist, or it's a zombie.
PID=<pid to watch>
while s=`ps -p $PID -o s=` && [[ "$s" && "$s" != 'Z' ]]; do
sleep 1
done
EDIT: The above script was given below by Rockallite. Thanks!
My orignal answer below works for Linux, relying on procfs i.e. /proc/. I don't know its portability:
while [[ ( -d /proc/$PID ) && ( -z `grep zombie /proc/$PID/status` ) ]]; do
sleep 1
done
It's not limited to shell, but OS's themselves do not have system calls to watch non-child process termination.
FreeBSD and Solaris have this handy pwait(1) utility, which does exactly, what you want.
I believe, other modern OSes also have the necessary system calls too (MacOS, for example, implements BSD's kqueue), but not all make it available from command-line.
From the bash manpage
wait [n ...]
Wait for each specified process and return its termination status
Each n may be a process ID or a job specification; if a
job spec is given, all processes in that job's pipeline are
waited for. If n is not given, all currently active child processes
are waited for, and the return status is zero. If n
specifies a non-existent process or job, the return status is
127. Otherwise, the return status is the exit status of the
last process or job waited for.
Okay, so it seems the answer is -- no, there is no built in tool.
After setting /proc/sys/kernel/yama/ptrace_scope to 0, it is possible to use the strace program. Further switches can be used to make it silent, so that it really waits passively:
strace -qqe '' -p <PID>
All these solutions are tested in Ubuntu 14.04:
Solution 1 (by using ps command):
Just to add up to Pierz answer, I would suggest:
while ps axg | grep -vw grep | grep -w process_name > /dev/null; do sleep 1; done
In this case, grep -vw grep ensures that grep matches only process_name and not grep itself. It has the advantage of supporting the cases where the process_name is not at the end of a line at ps axg.
Solution 2 (by using top command and process name):
while [[ $(awk '$12=="process_name" {print $0}' <(top -n 1 -b)) ]]; do sleep 1; done
Replace process_name with the process name that appears in top -n 1 -b. Please keep the quotation marks.
To see the list of processes that you wait for them to be finished, you can run:
while : ; do p=$(awk '$12=="process_name" {print $0}' <(top -n 1 -b)); [[ $b ]] || break; echo $p; sleep 1; done
Solution 3 (by using top command and process ID):
while [[ $(awk '$1=="process_id" {print $0}' <(top -n 1 -b)) ]]; do sleep 1; done
Replace process_id with the process ID of your program.
Blocking solution
Use the wait in a loop, for waiting for terminate all processes:
function anywait()
{
for pid in "$#"
do
wait $pid
echo "Process $pid terminated"
done
echo 'All processes terminated'
}
This function will exits immediately, when all processes was terminated. This is the most efficient solution.
Non-blocking solution
Use the kill -0 in a loop, for waiting for terminate all processes + do anything between checks:
function anywait_w_status()
{
for pid in "$#"
do
while kill -0 "$pid"
do
echo "Process $pid still running..."
sleep 1
done
done
echo 'All processes terminated'
}
The reaction time decreased to sleep time, because have to prevent high CPU usage.
A realistic usage:
Waiting for terminate all processes + inform user about all running PIDs.
function anywait_w_status2()
{
while true
do
alive_pids=()
for pid in "$#"
do
kill -0 "$pid" 2>/dev/null \
&& alive_pids+="$pid "
done
if [ ${#alive_pids[#]} -eq 0 ]
then
break
fi
echo "Process(es) still running... ${alive_pids[#]}"
sleep 1
done
echo 'All processes terminated'
}
Notes
These functions getting PIDs via arguments by $# as BASH array.
Had the same issue, I solved the issue killing the process and then waiting for each process to finish using the PROC filesystem:
while [ -e /proc/${pid} ]; do sleep 0.1; done
There is no builtin feature to wait for any process to finish.
You could send kill -0 to any PID found, so you don't get puzzled by zombies and stuff that will still be visible in ps (while still retrieving the PID list using ps).
If you need to both kill a process and wait for it finish, this can be achieved with killall(1) (based on process names), and start-stop-daemon(8) (based on a pidfile).
To kill all processes matching someproc and wait for them to die:
killall someproc --wait # wait forever until matching processes die
timeout 10s killall someproc --wait # timeout after 10 seconds
(Unfortunately, there's no direct equivalent of --wait with kill for a specific pid).
To kill a process based on a pidfile /var/run/someproc.pid using signal SIGINT, while waiting for it to finish, with SIGKILL being sent after 20 seconds of timeout, use:
start-stop-daemon --stop --signal INT --retry 20 --pidfile /var/run/someproc.pid
Use inotifywait to monitor some file that gets closed, when your process terminates. Example (on Linux):
yourproc >logfile.log & disown
inotifywait -q -e close logfile.log
-e specifies the event to wait for, -q means minimal output only on termination. In this case it will be:
logfile.log CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE
A single wait command can be used to wait for multiple processes:
yourproc1 >logfile1.log & disown
yourproc2 >logfile2.log & disown
yourproc3 >logfile3.log & disown
inotifywait -q -e close logfile1.log logfile2.log logfile3.log
The output string of inotifywait will tell you, which process terminated. This only works with 'real' files, not with something in /proc/
Rauno Palosaari's solution for Timeout in Seconds Darwin, is an excellent workaround for a UNIX-like OS that does not have GNU tail (it is not specific to Darwin). But, depending on the age of the UNIX-like operating system, the command-line offered is more complex than necessary, and can fail:
lsof -p $pid +r 1m%s -t | grep -qm1 $(date -v+${timeout}S +%s 2>/dev/null || echo INF)
On at least one old UNIX, the lsof argument +r 1m%s fails (even for a superuser):
lsof: can't read kernel name list.
The m%s is an output format specification. A simpler post-processor does not require it. For example, the following command waits on PID 5959 for up to five seconds:
lsof -p 5959 +r 1 | awk '/^=/ { if (T++ >= 5) { exit 1 } }'
In this example, if PID 5959 exits of its own accord before the five seconds elapses, ${?} is 0. If not ${?} returns 1 after five seconds.
It may be worth expressly noting that in +r 1, the 1 is the poll interval (in seconds), so it may be changed to suit the situation.
On a system like OSX you might not have pgrep so you can try this appraoch, when looking for processes by name:
while ps axg | grep process_name$ > /dev/null; do sleep 1; done
The $ symbol at the end of the process name ensures that grep matches only process_name to the end of line in the ps output and not itself.