How to Make Sure Only One Instance of a Bash Script Is Running at a Time

Quick-and-dirty way to ensure only one instance of a shell script is running at a time

Here's an implementation that uses a lockfile and echoes a PID into it. This serves as a protection if the process is killed before removing the pidfile:

LOCKFILE=/tmp/lock.txt
if [ -e ${LOCKFILE} ] && kill -0 `cat ${LOCKFILE}`; then
    echo "already running"
    exit
fi

# make sure the lockfile is removed when we exit and then claim it
trap "rm -f ${LOCKFILE}; exit" INT TERM EXIT
echo $$ > ${LOCKFILE}

# do stuff
sleep 1000

rm -f ${LOCKFILE}

The trick here is the kill -0 which doesn't deliver any signal but just checks if a process with the given PID exists. Also the call to trap will ensure that the lockfile is removed even when your process is killed (except kill -9).

What is the best way to ensure only one instance of a Bash script is running?

If the script is the same across all users, you can use a lockfile approach. If you acquire the lock, proceed else show a message and exit.

As an example:

[Terminal #1] $ lockfile -r 0 /tmp/the.lock
[Terminal #1] $ 

[Terminal #2] $ lockfile -r 0 /tmp/the.lock
[Terminal #2] lockfile: Sorry, giving up on "/tmp/the.lock"

[Terminal #1] $ rm -f /tmp/the.lock
[Terminal #1] $ 

[Terminal #2] $ lockfile -r 0 /tmp/the.lock
[Terminal #2] $ 

After /tmp/the.lock has been acquired your script will be the only one with access to execution. When you are done, just remove the lock. In script form this might look like:

#!/bin/bash

lockfile -r 0 /tmp/the.lock || exit 1

# Do stuff here

rm -f /tmp/the.lock

How to make sure only one instance of a Bash script is running at a time?

You want a pid file, maybe something like this:

pidfile=/path/to/pidfile
if [ -f "$pidfile" ] && kill -0 `cat $pidfile` 2>/dev/null; then
    echo still running
    exit 1
fi  
echo $$ > $pidfile

Bash script to ensure only one instance of a script running & others waiting

From man flock:

[ "${FLOCKER}" != "$0" ] && exec env FLOCKER="$0" flock -en "$0" "$0"
"$@" || :

This is useful boilerplate code for shell scripts. Put it at
the top of the shell script you want to lock and it'll automatically
lock itself on the first run. If the env var $FLOCKER is not set to
the shell script that is being run, then execute flock and grab an
exclusive non-blocking lock (using the script itself as the lock file)
before re-execing itself with the right arguments. It also sets the
FLOCKER env var to the right value so it doesn't run again.

Put this on top of ./script.sh (or on top of runner.sh) and your're good to go.

Continue script if only one instance is running?

Jefromi is correct; here is the logic I think you want:

#!/bin/bash
# this is "test.sh"

if [ $(pidof -x test.sh| wc -w) -gt 2 ]; then 
    echo "More than 1"
    exit
fi

echo "Only one; doing whatever..."

Quick-and-dirty way to ensure only one instance of a shell script is running at a time

Here's an implementation that uses a lockfile and echoes a PID into it. This serves as a protection if the process is killed before removing the pidfile:

LOCKFILE=/tmp/lock.txt
if [ -e ${LOCKFILE} ] && kill -0 `cat ${LOCKFILE}`; then
    echo "already running"
    exit
fi

# make sure the lockfile is removed when we exit and then claim it
trap "rm -f ${LOCKFILE}; exit" INT TERM EXIT
echo $$ > ${LOCKFILE}

# do stuff
sleep 1000

rm -f ${LOCKFILE}

The trick here is the kill -0 which doesn't deliver any signal but just checks if a process with the given PID exists. Also the call to trap will ensure that the lockfile is removed even when your process is killed (except kill -9).

Shell fragment to make sure only one instance a shell script runs at any given time

Put this at the start of the script

SCRIPTNAME=`basename $0`
PIDFILE=/var/run/${SCRIPTNAME}.pid

if [ -f ${PIDFILE} ]; then
   #verify if the process is actually still running under this pid
   OLDPID=`cat ${PIDFILE}`
   RESULT=`ps -ef | grep ${OLDPID} | grep ${SCRIPTNAME}`  

   if [ -n "${RESULT}" ]; then
     echo "Script already running! Exiting"
     exit 255
   fi

fi

#grab pid of this process and update the pid file with it
PID=`ps -ef | grep ${SCRIPTNAME} | head -n1 |  awk ' {print $2;} '`
echo ${PID} > ${PIDFILE}

and at the end

if [ -f ${PIDFILE} ]; then
    rm ${PIDFILE}
fi

This first of all checks for the existence of the pid file and exits if it's present. If so then it confirms that a process under this script name with the old pid is running and exits if so. If not then it carries on and updates the script with the new pid file. The bit at the end checks for the existence of the pid file and deletes it, so the script can run next time.

Check permissions on /var/run are OK for your script though, otherwise create the PID file in another directory. Same directory as the script runs in would be fine.

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