how to find whether a script run as a nohup finished or not?

linux unix shell background-process
learner135 picture learner135 · May 31, 2010 · Viewed 67.2k times · Source

I tried running a script using nohup like,

nohup script.sh &

When I tried 

ps -ef | grep "script.sh"

I couldn't find it there except for the grep which is being run with that string as a parameter.

Am I doing it right?. Does this mean that the process has indeed finished execution? Thanks.

Answer

Edward Dale picture Edward Dale · May 31, 2010

At the beginning of your shell script, write the PID to a file (for example, in /var/run). Then, you can just search for that PID to know if the process is done or not. You can get the PID of your shell script using the built-in $$ variable.

To record the PID, put at the top of your script:

echo $$ > /var/run/myscript.pid

Then, to check if it's still running:

ps -p `cat /var/run/myscript.pid`

You might not be able to write into /var/run as a normal user. If not, just use /tmp

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