I have a bash script that launches a child process that crashes (actually, hangs) from time to time and with no apparent reason (closed source, so there isn't much I can do about it). As a result, I would like to be able to launch this process for a given amount of time, and kill it if it did not return successfully after a given amount of time.
Is there a simple and robust way to achieve that using bash?
P.S.: tell me if this question is better suited to serverfault or superuser.
(As seen in:
BASH FAQ entry #68: "How do I run a command, and have it abort (timeout) after N seconds?")
If you don't mind downloading something, use timeout (sudo apt-get install timeout) and use it like: (most Systems have it already installed otherwise use sudo apt-get install coreutils)
timeout 10 ping www.goooooogle.com
If you don't want to download something, do what timeout does internally:
( cmdpid=$BASHPID; (sleep 10; kill $cmdpid) & exec ping www.goooooogle.com )
In case that you want to do a timeout for longer bash code, use the second option as such:
( cmdpid=$BASHPID;
(sleep 10; kill $cmdpid) \
& while ! ping -w 1 www.goooooogle.com
do
echo crap;
done )
# Spawn a child process:
(dosmth) & pid=$!
# in the background, sleep for 10 secs then kill that process
(sleep 10 && kill -9 $pid) &
or to get the exit codes as well:
# Spawn a child process:
(dosmth) & pid=$!
# in the background, sleep for 10 secs then kill that process
(sleep 10 && kill -9 $pid) & waiter=$!
# wait on our worker process and return the exitcode
exitcode=$(wait $pid && echo $?)
# kill the waiter subshell, if it still runs
kill -9 $waiter 2>/dev/null
# 0 if we killed the waiter, cause that means the process finished before the waiter
finished_gracefully=$?
sleep 999&
t=$!
sleep 10
kill $t
I also had this question and found two more things very useful:
The SECONDS variable in bash.
The command "pgrep".
So I use something like this on the command line (OSX 10.9):
ping www.goooooogle.com & PING_PID=$(pgrep 'ping'); SECONDS=0; while pgrep -q 'ping'; do sleep 0.2; if [ $SECONDS = 10 ]; then kill $PING_PID; fi; done
As this is a loop I included a "sleep 0.2" to keep the CPU cool. ;-)
(BTW: ping is a bad example anyway, you just would use the built-in "-t" (timeout) option.)
Assuming you have (or can easily make) a pid file for tracking the child's pid, you could then create a script that checks the modtime of the pid file and kills/respawns the process as needed. Then just put the script in crontab to run at approximately the period you need.
Let me know if you need more details. If that doesn't sound like it'd suit your needs, what about upstart?
One way is to run the program in a subshell, and communicate with the subshell through a named pipe with the read command. This way you can check the exit status of the process being run and communicate this back through the pipe.
Here's an example of timing out the yes command after 3 seconds. It gets the PID of the process using pgrep (possibly only works on Linux). There is also some problem with using a pipe in that a process opening a pipe for read will hang until it is also opened for write, and vice versa. So to prevent the read command hanging, I've "wedged" open the pipe for read with a background subshell. (Another way to prevent a freeze to open the pipe read-write, i.e. read -t 5 <>finished.pipe - however, that also may not work except with Linux.)
rm -f finished.pipe
mkfifo finished.pipe
{ yes >/dev/null; echo finished >finished.pipe ; } &
SUBSHELL=$!
# Get command PID
while : ; do
PID=$( pgrep -P $SUBSHELL yes )
test "$PID" = "" || break
sleep 1
done
# Open pipe for writing
{ exec 4>finished.pipe ; while : ; do sleep 1000; done } &
read -t 3 FINISHED <finished.pipe
if [ "$FINISHED" = finished ] ; then
echo 'Subprocess finished'
else
echo 'Subprocess timed out'
kill $PID
fi
rm finished.pipe
Here's an attempt which tries to avoid killing a process after it has already exited, which reduces the chance of killing another process with the same process ID (although it's probably impossible to avoid this kind of error completely).
run_with_timeout ()
{
t=$1
shift
echo "running \"$*\" with timeout $t"
(
# first, run process in background
(exec sh -c "$*") &
pid=$!
echo $pid
# the timeout shell
(sleep $t ; echo timeout) &
waiter=$!
echo $waiter
# finally, allow process to end naturally
wait $pid
echo $?
) \
| (read pid
read waiter
if test $waiter != timeout ; then
read status
else
status=timeout
fi
# if we timed out, kill the process
if test $status = timeout ; then
kill $pid
exit 99
else
# if the program exited normally, kill the waiting shell
kill $waiter
exit $status
fi
)
}
Use like run_with_timeout 3 sleep 10000, which runs sleep 10000 but ends it after 3 seconds.
This is like other answers which use a background timeout process to kill the child process after a delay. I think this is almost the same as Dan's extended answer (https://stackoverflow.com/a/5161274/1351983), except the timeout shell will not be killed if it has already ended.
After this program has ended, there will still be a few lingering "sleep" processes running, but they should be harmless.
This may be a better solution than my other answer because it does not use the non-portable shell feature read -t and does not use pgrep.
Here's the third answer I've submitted here. This one handles signal interrupts and cleans up background processes when SIGINT is received. It uses the $BASHPID and exec trick used in the top answer to get the PID of a process (in this case $$ in a sh invocation). It uses a FIFO to communicate with a subshell that is responsible for killing and cleanup. (This is like the pipe in my second answer, but having a named pipe means that the signal handler can write into it too.)
run_with_timeout ()
{
t=$1 ; shift
trap cleanup 2
F=$$.fifo ; rm -f $F ; mkfifo $F
# first, run main process in background
"$#" & pid=$!
# sleeper process to time out
( sh -c "echo \$\$ >$F ; exec sleep $t" ; echo timeout >$F ) &
read sleeper <$F
# control shell. read from fifo.
# final input is "finished". after that
# we clean up. we can get a timeout or a
# signal first.
( exec 0<$F
while : ; do
read input
case $input in
finished)
test $sleeper != 0 && kill $sleeper
rm -f $F
exit 0
;;
timeout)
test $pid != 0 && kill $pid
sleeper=0
;;
signal)
test $pid != 0 && kill $pid
;;
esac
done
) &
# wait for process to end
wait $pid
status=$?
echo finished >$F
return $status
}
cleanup ()
{
echo signal >$$.fifo
}
I've tried to avoid race conditions as far as I can. However, one source of error I couldn't remove is when the process ends near the same time as the timeout. For example, run_with_timeout 2 sleep 2 or run_with_timeout 0 sleep 0. For me, the latter gives an error:
timeout.sh: line 250: kill: (23248) - No such process
as it is trying to kill a process that has already exited by itself.
#Kill command after 10 seconds
timeout 10 command
#If you don't have timeout installed, this is almost the same:
sh -c '(sleep 10; kill "$$") & command'
#The same as above, with muted duplicate messages:
sh -c '(sleep 10; kill "$$" 2>/dev/null) & command'
Related
I'm running a shell test program that I can view a progress bar but when I run it I keep getting a unary error . Is kill -0 a way to kill a subprocess in shell ?
Or is there another method to test if my process has died?
heres my code to run a progress bar until my command ends:
#!/bin/sh
# test my progress bar
spin[0]="-"
spin[1]="\\"
spin[2]="|"
spin[3]="/"
sleep 10 2>/dev/null & # run as background process
pid=$! # grab process id
echo -n "[sleeping] ${spin[0]}"
while [ kill -0 $pid ] # wait for process to end
do
for i in "${spin[#]}"
do
echo -ne "\b$i"
sleep 0.1
done
done
enter code here
1. Is kill -0 a way to kill a subprocess in shell ?
On Linux OS, kill -0 is just a way to try to kill a process and see what happens, '0' is not a POSIX signal, it does nothing at all.
If the process is running, kill will return 0, if not, it will return 1.
ps $pid >/dev/null 2>&1 could do the same job.
To kill a process, one generally use the SIGQUIT/3 (quit program) or SIGKILL/9 (terminate program) ; the process could trap the signal and make a clean exit, or it could ignore the signal so the OS has to terminate it 'quick and dirty'.
2. test and '['
The square bracket '[' is an utility ( /bin/[ ), and expect something you didn't provide correctly.
The syntax of while is while list; do list; done where list will return an exit code, so you don't have to use something else.
3. how do I watch for a process to have died in shell script?
Like you did, the code below will do the job:
#!/bin/bash
spin[0]="-"
spin[1]="\\"
spin[2]="|"
spin[3]="/"
sleep 10 2>/dev/null & # run as background process
pid=$! # grab process id
echo -n "[sleeping] ${spin[0]}"
#while ps -p $pid >/dev/null 2>&1 # using ps
while kill -0 $pid >/dev/null 2>&1 # using kill
do
for i in "${spin[#]}"
do
echo -ne "\b$i"
sleep 0.5
done
done
CAVEATS
I use /bin/bash as interpreter, as some of the Bourne Shell (sh) could not support the use of an array (ie spin[n]).
It's probably cleaner to run the spinner in the background and kill it when the process (running in the foreground) terminates. Or, you could open another file descriptor and write something into it after the background process terminates, and have the main process block on a read. eg:
#!/bin/bash
# test my progress bar
spin[0]='-'
spin[1]='\'
spin[2]='|'
spin[3]='/'
{ { { sleep 10 2>/dev/null; echo >&5; } & # run as background process
} 5>&1 1>&3 | { # wait for process to end
while ! read -t 1; do
printf "\r[sleeping] ${spin[ $(( i = ++i % 4 )) ]}"
done
}
} 3>&1
By referencing bash: silently kill background function process and Timeout a command in bash without unnecessary delay, I wrote my own script to set a timeout for a command, as well as silencing the kill message.
But I still am getting a "Terminated" message when my process gets killed. What's wrong with my code?
#!/bin/bash
silent_kill() {
kill $1 2>/dev/null
wait $1 2>/dev/null
}
timeout() {
limit=$1 #timeout limit
shift
command=$* #command to run
interval=1 #default interval between checks if the process is still alive
delay=1 #default delay between SIGTERM and SIGKILL
(
((t = limit))
while ((t > 0)); do
sleep $interval;
#kill -0 $$ || exit 0
((t -= interval))
done
silent_kill $$
#kill -s SIGTERM $$ && kill -0 $$ || exit 0
sleep $delay
#kill -s SIGKILL $$
) &> /dev/null &
exec $*
}
timeout 1 sleep 10
There's nothing wrong with your code, that "Terminated" message doesn't come from your script but from the invoking shell (the one you launch your script
from).
You can deactivate if by disabling job control:
$ set +m
$ bash <your timeout script>
Perhaps bash has moved on in 4 years. I do know you can avoid
getting Terminated by disowning a child process. You can no longer job control it though. Eg:
$ sleep 100 &
[1] 15436
$ disown -r
$ kill -9 15436
help disown:
disown [-h] [-ar] [jobspec ...]
Remove jobs from current shell.
Removes each JOBSPEC argument from the table of active jobs. Without
any JOBSPECs, the shell uses its notion of the current job.
-a remove all jobs if JOBSPEC is not supplied
-h mark each JOBSPEC so that SIGHUP is not sent to the job if the shell receives a SIGHUP
-r remove only running jobs
Internally the shell maintains a list of children it forked and wait()s for any of them to exit or be killed. When a child's exit status was collected, the shell prints a message. This is called monitoring in shell parlance.
It seems you want to turn off monitoring. Monitoring is managed with the m option; to turn it on, use set -m (the default at startup). To turn it off, set +m.
Note that monitoring off also disables messages for asynchronous jobs, e.g. no more messages like
$ sleep 5 &
[1] 59468
$
[1] + done sleep 5
$
I have a backgrounded process that I would like to wait for (in case it fails or dies), unless I receive user input. Said another way, the user input should interrupt my waiting.
Here's a simplified snippet of my code
#!/bin/bash
...
mplayer -noconsolecontrols "$media_url" &
sleep 10 # enough time for it to fail
ps -p $!
if [ $? -ne 0 ]
then
fallback
else
read
kill $!
fi
The line that I particularly dislike is sleep 10, which is bad because it could be too much time, or not enough time.
Is there a way to wait $! || read or the equivalent?
Use kill -0 to validate that the process is still there and read with a timeout of 0 to test for user input. Something like this?
pid=$!
while kill -0 $pid; do
read -t 0 && exit
sleep 1
done
Original
ps -p to check the process. read -t 1 to wait for user input.
pid=$!
got_input=142
while ps -p $pid > /dev/null; do
if read -t 1; then
got_input=$?
kill $pid
fi
done
This allows for branching based whether the process died, or was killed due to user input.
All credit to gubblebozer. The only reason I'm posting this answer is the claim by moderators that my edits to his post constituted altering his intent.
Anti Race-Condition
First off, a race condition involving pids is (very likely) not a concern if you're fairly quick, because they're reused on a cycle.
Even so, I guess anything is possible... Here's some code that handles that possibility, without breaking your head on traps.
got_input=142
while true; do
if read -t 1; then
got_input=$?
pkill --ns $$ name > /dev/null
break
elif ! pgrep --ns $$ name > /dev/null; then
break
fi
done
Now, we've accomplished our goal, while (probably) completely eliminating the race condition.
Any loop with a sleep or similar timeout in it, will introduce a race condition. It's better to actively wait for the process to die, or, in this case, to trap the signal that's sent when a child dies.
#!/bin/bash
set -o monitor
trap stop_process SIGCHLD
stop_process()
{
echo sigchld received
exit
}
# the background process: (this simulates a process that exits after 10 seconds)
sleep 10 &
procpid=$!
echo pid of process: $procpid
echo -n hit enter:
read
# not reached when SIGCHLD is received
echo killing pid $procpid
kill $procpid
I'm not 100% sure this eliminates any race condition, but it's a lot closer than a sleep loop.
edit: the shorter, less verbose version
#!/bin/bash
set -o monitor
trap exit SIGCHLD
sleep 5 &
read -p "hit enter: "
kill $!
edit 2: setting the trap before starting the background process prevents another race condition in which the process would die before the trap was installed
I wonder if anyone can help with this?
I have a bash script. It starts a sub-process which is another gui-based application. The bash script then goes into an interactive mode getting input from the user. This interactive mode continues indefinately. I would like it to terminate when the gui-application in the sub-process exits.
I have looked at SIGCHLD but this doesn't seem to be the answer. Here's what I've tried but I don't get a signal when the prog ends.
set -o monitor
"${prog}" &
prog_pid=$!
function check_pid {
kill -0 $1 2> /dev/null
}
function cleanup {
### does cleanup stuff here
exit
}
function sigchld {
check_pid $prog_pid
[[ $? == 1 ]] && cleanup
}
trap sigchld SIGCHLD
Updated following answers. I now have this working using the suggestion from 'nosid'. I have another, related, issue now which is that the interactive process that follows is a basic menu driven process that blocks waiting for key input from the user. If the child process ends the USR1 signal is not handled until after input is received. Is there any way to force the signal to be handled immediately?
The wait look looks like this:
stty raw # set the tty driver to raw mode
max=$1 # maximum valid choice
choice=$(expr $max + 1) # invalid choice
while [[ $choice -gt $max ]]; do
choice=`dd if=/dev/tty bs=1 count=1 2>/dev/null`
done
stty sane # restore tty
Updated with solution. I have solved this. The trick was to use nonblocking I/O for the read. Now, with the answer from 'nosid' and my modifications, I have exactly what I want. For completeness, here is what works for me:
#!/bin/bash -bm
{
"${1}"
kill -USR1 $$
} &
function cleanup {
# cleanup stuff
exit
}
trap cleanup SIGUSR1
while true ; do
stty raw # set the tty driver to raw mode
max=9 # maximum valid choice
while [[ $choice -gt $max || -z $choice ]]; do
choice=`dd iflag=nonblock if=/dev/tty bs=1 count=1 2>/dev/null`
done
stty sane # restore tty
# process choice
done
Here is a different approach. Instead of using SIGCHLD, you can execute an arbitrary command as soon as the GUI application terminates.
{
some_command args...
kill -USR1 $$
} &
function sigusr1() { ... }
trap sigusr1 SIGUSR1
Ok. I think I understand what you need. Have a look at my .xinitrc:
xrdb ~/.Xdefaults
source ~/.xinitrc.hw.settings
xcompmgr &
xscreensaver &
# after starting some arbitrary crap we want to start the main gui.
startfluxbox & PIDOFAPP=$! ## THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART
setxkbmap genja
wmclockmon -bl &
sleep 1
wmctrl -s 3 && aterms sone &
sleep 1
wmctrl -s 0
wait $PIDOFAPP ## THIS IS THE SECOND PART OF THE IMPORTANT PART
xeyes -geometry 400x400+500+400 &
sleep 2
echo im out!
What happens is that after you send a process to the background, you can use wait to wait until the process dies. whatever is after wait will not be executed as long as the application is running. You can use this to exit after the GUI has been shut down.
PS: I run bash.
I think you need to do:
set -bm
or
set -o monitor notify
As per the bash manual:
-b
Cause the status of terminated background jobs to be reported immediately, rather than before printing the next primary prompt.
The shell's main job is executing child processes, and
it needs to catch SIGCHLD for its own purposes. This somehow restricts it to pass on the signal to the script itself.
Could you just check for the child pid and based on that send the alert. You can find the child pid as below-
bash_pid=$$
while true
do
children=`ps -eo ppid | grep -w $bash_pid`
if [ -z "$children" ]; then
cleanup
alert
exit
fi
done
I have a web server where I run some slow-starting programs as daemons. These sometimes need quick restarting (or stopping) when I recompile them or switch to another installation of them.
Inspired by http://mywiki.wooledge.org/ProcessManagement, I'm writing a script
called daemonise.sh that looks like
#!/bin/sh
while :; do
./myprogram lotsadata.xml
echo "Restarting server..." 1>&2
done
to keep a "daemon" running. Since I sometimes need to stop it, or just
restart it, I run that script in a screen session, like:
$ ./daemonise.sh & DPID=$!
$ screen -d
Then perhaps I recompile myprogram, install it to a new path, start
the new one up and want to kill the old one:
$ screen -r
$ kill $DPID
$ screen -d
This works fine when I'm the only maintainer, but now I want to let
someone else stop/restart the program, no matter who started it. And
to make things more complicated, the daemonise.sh script in fact
starts about 16 programs, making it a hassle to kill every single one
if you don't know their PIDs.
What would be the "best practices" way of letting another user
stop/restart the daemons?
I thought about shared screen sessions, but that just sounds hacky and
insecure. The best solution I've come up with for now is to wrap
starting and killing in a script that catches certain signals:
#!/bin/bash
DPID=
trap './daemonise.sh & DPID=$!' USR1
trap 'kill $DPID' USR2 EXIT
# Ensure trapper wrapper doesn't exit:
while :; do
sleep 10000 & wait $!
done
Now, should another user need to stop the daemons and I can't do it,
she just has to know the pid of the wrapper, and e.g. sudo kill -s
USR2 $wrapperpid. (Also, this makes it possible to run the daemons
on reboots, and still kill them cleanly.)
Is there a better solution? Are there obvious problems with this
solution that I'm not seeing?
(After reading Greg's Bash Wiki, I'd like to avoid any solution involving pgrep or PID-files …)
I recommend a PID based init script. Anyone with sudo privileged to the script will be able to start and stop the server processes.
On improving your approach: wouldn't it be advisable to make sure that your sleep command in sleep 10000 & wait $! gets properly terminated if your pidwrapper script exits somehow?
Otherwise there would remain a dangling sleep process in the process table for quite some time.
Similarly, wouldn't it be cleaner to terminate myprogram in daemonise.sh properly on restart (i. e. if daemonise.sh receives a TERM signal)?
In addition, it is possible to suppress job notification messages and test for pid existence before killing.
#!/bin/sh
# cat daemonise.sh
# cf. "How to suppress Terminated message after killing in bash?",
# http://stackoverflow.com/q/81520
trap '
echo "server shut down..." 1>&2
kill $spid1 $spid2 $spid3 &&
wait $spid1 $spid2 $spid3 2>/dev/null
exit
' TERM
while :; do
echo "Starting server..." 1>&2
#./myprogram lotsadata.xml
sleep 100 &
spid1=${!}
sleep 100 &
spid2=${!}
sleep 100 &
spid3=${!}
wait
echo "Restarting server..." 1>&2
done
#------------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/bash
# cat pidwrapper
DPID=
trap '
kill -0 ${!} 2>/dev/null && kill ${!} && wait ${!} 2>/dev/null
./daemonise.sh & DPID=${!}
' USR1
trap '
kill -0 ${!} 2>/dev/null && kill ${!} && wait ${!} 2>/dev/null
kill -0 $DPID 2>/dev/null && kill $DPID && wait ${DPID} 2>/dev/null
' USR2
trap '
trap - EXIT
kill -0 $DPID 2>/dev/null && kill $DPID && wait ${DPID} 2>/dev/null
kill -0 ${!} 2>/dev/null && kill ${!} && wait ${!} 2>/dev/null
exit 0
' EXIT
# Ensure trapper wrapper does not exit:
while :; do
sleep 10000 & wait $!
done
#------------------------------------------------------------
# test
{
wrapperpid="`exec sh -c './pidwrapper & echo ${!}' | head -1`"
echo "wrapperpid: $wrapperpid"
for n in 1 2 3 4 5; do
sleep 2
# start daemonise.sh
kill -s USR1 $wrapperpid
sleep 2
# kill daemonise.sh
kill -s USR2 $wrapperpid
done
sleep 2
echo kill $wrapperpid
kill $wrapperpid
}