Best way to check that a process is running on a Unix system?

[Arthur Pemberton]

Hello list,

What is the best way to check that a process is running (or better yet
number of instances) based on the name of the process? Would have to
work on a unix/linux system.

Thank you.

--
To be updated...

[BJörn Lindqvist]

> What is the best way to check that a process is running (or better yet
> number of instances) based on the name of the process? Would have to
> work on a unix/linux system.

Use "ps -C proc_name". Then either read the nr of lines in the output
(for the number of instances) or read the return value. 0 if the
process is running. Or read the /proc/*/status files and check if your
process is in any of them.

--
mvh Björn

[Eriol]

Arthur Pemberton wrote:

> What is the best way to check that a process is running (or better yet
> number of instances) based on the name of the process? Would have to
> work on a unix/linux system.

Did you try pidof?

Bye,
Eriol

[Nick Craig-Wood]

Here is a module I wrote ages ago which does the grubbling around in
/proc for you.

>>> import process
>>> p = process.ProcessList()
>>> p.named("emacs")
[Process(pid = 20610), Process(pid = 6076), Process(pid = 6113), Process(pid = 6590), Process(pid = 857), Process(pid = 1394), Process(pid = 28974)]
>>>

Parsing the output of "ps -ef" will be more portable between unixes
though!

------------------------------------------------------------

"""
Manage Processes and a ProcessList under Linux.
"""

import os
import signal

class Process(object):
"""Represents a process"""
def __init__(self, pid):
"""Make a new Process object"""
self.proc = "/proc/%d" % pid
pid,command,state,parent_pid = file(os.path.join(self.proc, "stat")).read().strip().split()[:4]
command = command[1:-1]
self.pid = int(pid)
self.command = command
self.state = state
self.parent_pid = int(parent_pid)
self.parent = None
self.children = []
def kill(self, sig = signal.SIGTERM):
"""Kill this process with SIGTERM by default"""
os.kill(self.pid, sig)
def __repr__(self):
return "Process(pid = %r)" % self.pid
def getcwd(self):
"""Read the current directory of this process or None for can't"""
try:
return os.readlink(os.path.join(self.proc, "cwd"))
except OSError:
return None

class ProcessList(object):
"""Represents a list of processes"""
def __init__(self):
"""Read /proc and fill up the process lists"""
self.by_pid = {}
self.by_command = {}
for f in os.listdir("/proc"):
if f.isdigit():
process = Process(int(f))
self.by_pid[process.pid] = process
self.by_command.setdefault(process.command, []).append(process)
for process in self.by_pid.values():
try:
parent = self.by_pid[process.parent_pid]
#print "child",process
#print "parent",parent
parent.children.append(process)
process.parent = parent
except KeyError:
pass
def named(self, name):
"""Returns a list of processes with the given name"""
return self.by_command.get(name, [])

------------------------------------------------------------

--
Nick Craig-Wood <ni...@craig-wood.com> -- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick