Related
I want to kill a bash command when I found some string in the output.
To clarify, I want the solution to be similar to a timeout command:
timeout 10s looping_program.sh
Which will execute the script: looping_program.sh and kill the script after 10 seconds of execute.
Instead I want something like:
regexout "^Success$" looping_program.sh
Which will execute the script until it matches a line that just says Success in the stdout of the program.
Note that I'm assuming that this looping_program.sh does not exit at the same time it outputs Success for whatever reason, so simply waiting for the program to exit would waste time if I don't care about what happens after that.
So something like:
bash -e looping_program.sh > /tmp/output &
PID="$(ps aux | grep looping_program.sh | head -1 | tr -s ' ' | cut -f 2 -d ' ')"
echo $PID
while :; do
echo "$(tail -1 /tmp/output)"
if [[ "$(tail -1 /tmp/output)" == "Success" ]]; then
kill $PID
exit 0
fi
sleep 1
done
Where looping_program.sh is something like:
echo "Fail"
sleep 1;
echo "Fail"
sleep 1;
echo "Fail"
sleep 1;
echo "Success"
sleep 1;
echo "Fail"
sleep 1;
echo "Fail"
sleep 1;
echo "Fail"
sleep 1;
But that is not very robust (uses a single tmp file... might kill other programs...) and I want it to just be one command. Does something like this exist? I may just write a c program to do it if not.
P.S.: I provided my code as an example of what I wanted the program to do. It does not use good programming practices. Notes from other commenters:
#KamilCuk Do not use temporary file. Use a fifo.
#pjh Note that any approach that involves using kill with a PID in shell code runs the risk of killing the wrong process. Use kill in shell programs only when it is absolutely necessary.
There are more suggestions below from other users, I just wanted to make sure no one came across this and thought it would be good to model their code after.
looping_program() {
for i in 1 2 3; do echo $i; sleep 1; done
echo Success
yes
}
coproc looping_program
while IFS= read -r line; do
if [[ "$line" =~ Success ]]; then
break
fi
done <&${COPROC[0]}
exec {COPROC[0]}>&- {COPROC[1]}>&-
kill ${COPROC_PID}
wait ${COPROC_PID}
Notes:
Do not use temporary file. Use a fifo.
Do not use tail -n1 to read last line. Read from the stream in a loop.
Do not repeat tail -1 twice. Cache the result.
Wait for pid after killing to synchronize.
When you're using a coprocess, use COPROC_PID to get the PID
When you're not using a coprocess, use $! to get the PID of a background process started from the current shell.
When you can't use $! (because the process you're trying to get a PID of was not spawned in the background as a direct child of the current shell), do not use ps aux | grep to get the pid. Use pgrep.
Do not use echo $(stuff). Just run the stuff, no echo.
With expect
#!/usr/bin/env -S expect -f
set timeout -1
spawn ./looping_program.sh
expect "Success"
send -- "\x03"
expect eof
Call it looping_killer:
$ ./looping_killer
spawn ./looping_program.sh
Fail
Fail
Fail
Success
^C
To pass the program and pattern:
./looping_killer some_program "some pattern"
You'd change the expect script to
#!/usr/bin/env -S expect -f
set timeout -1
spawn [lindex $argv 0]
expect -- [lindex $argv 1]
send -- "\x03"
expect eof
Assuming that your looping program exists when it tries to write to a broken pipe, this will print all output up to and including the 'Success' line and then exit:
./looping_program | sed '/^Success$/q'
You may need to disable buffering of the looping program output. See Force line-buffering of stdout in a pipeline and How to make output of any shell command unbuffered? for ways to do it.
See Should I save my scripts with the .sh extension? and Erlkonig: Commandname Extensions Considered Harmful for reasons why I dropped the '.sh' suffix.
Note that any approach that involves using kill with a PID in shell code runs the risk of killing the wrong process. Use kill in shell programs only when it is absolutely necessary.
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.
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'
Say I have this pseudocode in bash
#!/bin/bash
things
for i in {1..3}
do
nohup someScript[i] &
done
wait
for i in {4..6}
do
nohup someScript[i] &
done
wait
otherThings
and say this someScript[i] sometimes end up hanging.
Is there a way I can take the process IDs (with $!)
and check periodically if the process is taking more than a specified amount of time after which I want to kill the hanged processes with kill -9 ?
Unfortunately the answer from #Eugeniu did not work for me, timeout gave an error.
However I found useful doing this routine, I'll post it here so anyone can take advantage of it if in my same problem.
Create another script which goes like this
#!/bin/bash
#monitor.sh
pid=$1
counter=10
while ps -p $pid > /dev/null
do
if [[ $counter -eq 0 ]] ; then
kill -9 $pid
#if it's still there then kill it
fi
counter=$((counter-1))
sleep 1
done
then in the main work you just put
things
for i in {1..3}
do
nohup someScript[i] &
./monitor.sh $! &
done
wait
In this way for any of your someScript you will have a parallel process that checks if it's still there every chosen interval (until maximum time decided by the counter) and that actually quit itself if the associated process dies (or gets killed)
One possible approach:
#!/bin/bash
# things
mypids=()
for i in {1..3}; do
# launch the script with timeout (3600s)
timeout 3600 nohup someScript[i] &
mypids[i]=$! # store the PID
done
wait "${mypids[#]}"
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.