Unix Shell - Re: Daily scheduled job, but need to check if previous job has completed.

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Re: Daily scheduled job, but need to check if previous job has completed.

Robert Latest

2007-12-06, 1:29 pm

Eliot wrote:
> Thanks for all the help!
>
> [The solution with] Kill -0 posted by Joachim Schmitz solved my
> problem, incidentally kill -0 wasn't in the man page or help on my
> box!

Let me say again that "kill -0", after a reboot, may detect a new, unrelated
process that just happens to have the same ID that your script had before
the reboot. If that new process is a permanently-running service, it will
effectively block your script from ever being re-run.

I prefer a grep on ps's output because there you can check against the
(command-line) name of the process in question.

I wrote something to that effect about a week ago but forgot to post it, so
I posted it just now.

robert