ps - Check if program is running with bash shell script?

Question

This is an example of a bash script which checks for some running process (daemon or service) and does specific actions (reload, sends mail) if there is no such process running.

check_process(){
        # check the args
        if [ "$1" = "" ];
        then
                return 0
        fi

        #PROCESS_NUM => get the process number regarding the given thread name
        PROCESS_NUM='ps -ef | grep "$1" | grep -v "grep" | wc -l'
        # for degbuging...
        $PROCESS_NUM
        if [ $PROCESS_NUM -eq 1 ];
        then
                return 1
        else
                return 0
        fi
}

# Check whether the instance of thread exists:
while [ 1 ] ; do
        echo 'begin checking...'
        check_process "python test_demo.py" # the thread name
        CHECK_RET = $?
        if [ $CHECK_RET -eq 0 ]; # none exist
        then
                # do something...
        fi
        sleep 60
done

However, it doesn't work. I got "ERROR: Garbage option." for the ps command. What's wrong with these scripts? Thanks!

Answer 1

You can achieve almost everything in PROCESS_NUM with this one-liner:

[ `pgrep $1` ] && return 1 || return 0

if you're looking for a partial match, i.e. program is named foobar and you want your $1 to be just foo you can add the -f switch to pgrep:

[[ `pgrep -f $1` ]] && return 1 || return 0

Putting it all together your script could be reworked like this:

#!/bin/bash

check_process() {
  echo "$ts: checking $1"
  [ "$1" = "" ]  && return 0
  [ `pgrep -n $1` ] && return 1 || return 0
}

while [ 1 ]; do 
  # timestamp
  ts=`date +%T`

  echo "$ts: begin checking..."
  check_process "dropbox"
  [ $? -eq 0 ] && echo "$ts: not running, restarting..." && `dropbox start -i > /dev/null`
  sleep 5
done

Running it would look like this:

# SHELL #1
22:07:26: begin checking...
22:07:26: checking dropbox
22:07:31: begin checking...
22:07:31: checking dropbox

# SHELL #2
$ dropbox stop
Dropbox daemon stopped.

# SHELL #1
22:07:36: begin checking...
22:07:36: checking dropbox
22:07:36: not running, restarting...
22:07:42: begin checking...
22:07:42: checking dropbox

Hope this helps!