In unix how to find out if process running and return true/false? - bash

I'm writing a unix shell script and need to check if there are currently running processes with "xyz" in their directory. If yes than continue to next command and show text like "Found It".
If not than don't continue and display text like "Process Not Found".
I tried something like this:
if ps -ef | grep xyz
then
echo "XYZ Process Found!"
else
echo "XYZ Process Not Found!"
fi
But it just showing me the processes and display "process found" even if there's no xyz process.

I believe you want to check the output of the command against a value using Command substition, from the linked bash-hackers wiki The command substitution expands to the output of commands. These commands are executed in a subshell, and their stdout data is what the substitution syntax expands to. Also, count the lines and remove grep. Something like,
if [[ $(ps -ef | grep xyz | grep -v grep | wc -l) != 0 ]]; then
echo "XYZ Process Found!"
else
echo "XYZ Process Not Found!"
fi
Edit
Based on the comments below, you should probably use
if [[ $(ps -ef | grep -c xyz) -ne 1 ]]; then
which is a lot easier to read.

When you run grep xyz, that process - grep xyz - is also running & thus shown in the output of ps -ef.
This running process command line contains xyz. Thus grep passes that line to output.
Hence you always get zero exit status - i.e. success.
2 Solutions:
use if ps -ef | grep '[x]yz'; then. (You may want to suppress grep output with -q)
The grep command being run is grep [x]yz. This gets printed in ps -ef output.
Obviously, grep filters out this line. [x]yz could be matched with \[x\]yz, not with [x]yz.
use if pgrep -f xyz >/dev/null; then
Check man pgrep for more details..

You can also use pgrep. From pgrep(1):
pgrep looks through the currently running processes and lists the
process IDs which match the selection criteria to stdout.
[...]
EXIT STATUS
0 One or more processes matched the criteria.
1 No processes matched.
2 Syntax error in the command line.
3 Fatal error: out of memory etc.
Example output:
[~]% pgrep xterm
18231
19070
31727
You can use it in an if statement like so:
if pgrep xterm > /dev/null; then
echo Found xterm
else
echo xterm not found
fi
Note: pgrep is not a standard utility (ie. it's not in POSIX), but widely available on at least Linux and I believe most BSD systems.

is_xyz_running() {
[ "$(pgrep xyz)" ] && echo true || echo false
}

Related

Grep issue with if else statement in bash

I am trying to check whether a docker container exists using grep.
The following script signals an error exit during running when IMAGE is empty and is fine when IMAGE is set. I can't find out the cause.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -e
IMAGE=$(docker ps | grep my-dev-image)
if [[ -z "$IMAGE" ]]; then
echo "It is not there"
else
echo "It is there"
fi
When you use set -e in a script the shell will exit whenever a command fails. It interacts badly with your grep call because grep exits with an error code if it doesn't find a match. If grep fails then the entire IMAGE=$(...) assignment fails and the script exits instead of setting IMAGE to an empty string.
You can fix this by ensuring the assignment always succeeds. A common idiom for this is to append || :. Adding || cmd will run cmd whenever the command on the left fails. And : is a command that always succeeds. (Yes, it's a command name consisting of a single colon. Strange, but it's a legal identifier.)
IMAGE=$(docker ps | grep my-dev-image) || :
Alternatively, you could check grep's exit code directly by using it in the if statement. This is what I would do if I didn't care about grep's output:
if docker ps | grep -q my-dev-image; then
echo "It is there"
else
echo "It is not there"
fi

how stopped script while procces id exist? Solaris

I want to stall the execution of my script until a process is closed (I have the PID stored in a variable).
#!/bin/bash
outputl=$( ps -ef | grep $var4 | awk '{print $2}' ) >> $logfile
while [ "ps -p $outputl" ] > /dev/null;
do
sleep 1;
done
echo "Stopped $instance" >> $logfile
//command...
It stays in the "while" and not continue whit script.
This line:
while [ "ps -p $output1" ]
does not execute the ps command. It simply tests whether the string "ps -p $output1" is not empty, and it obviously isn't. To test the output of a command, use $():
while [ "$(ps -p "$output1")" ]
But since ps produces a header, this will always be true. The best way to test if a PID exists is to use the kill command with signal 0; this doesn't actually send a signal, it just tests whether it's possible to send a signal. I'm assuming this code is being run either by root or the userid running the application being checked. So you can write:
while kill -0 "$output1" 2>/dev/null
Also, your code for getting the PID into $output1 is wrong. ps -ef will also include the grep command, which matches the name you're looking for, so you need to filter that out. Use:
output1=$(ps -ef | grep "$var4" | awk '!/grep/ { print $2 }')
Redirecting the output to $logfile is not necessary, since variable assignments don't print anything.
Many systems have a pgrep command, which can be used by itself to test if a process with a given name exists; if you have this, you can use it instead of reinventing the wheel (and if not, you should be able to install it).
If you have the PID then just wait for it to complete. Try:
outputl=$( ps -ef | awk -v v="$var4" '$0~v{print $2}' )
wait "$outputl"
echo "Stopped $instance" >> $logfile
then look for a better way to find the pid in the first line.

bash: test if a process is running with a certain option

I would to know if it's possible to detect if amarok is playing music or not, in bash.
I have tested
#! /bin/bash
if [ "$(pidof amarok --play)" ]
then
echo amarok is playing music!
else
echo amarok is not playing!
fi
But I have this error:
pidof: invalid options on command line!
pidof thinks that --play is its option, and that is of course an error.
It would be better to check if --play is inside the commandline that was used to start amarok:
grep -- --play /proc/$(pidof amarok)/cmdline
Another option is to grep output of ps aux:
ps aux | grep [a]marok.*--play
In the both cases we suppose that there only one amarok running in the system.
Update 1.
To check if any music is playing at the moment,
you can so:
grep RUNNING /proc/asound/card*/pcm*/sub*/status

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

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.

Resources