Determine programmatically if a program is running

Question

In C, how can I find out programmatically if a process is already running on Linux/Ubuntu to avoid having it start twice? I'm looking for something similar to pidof.

Answer 1

You can walk the pid entries in /proc and check for your process in either the cmdline file or perform a readlink on the exe link (The following uses the first method).

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <dirent.h>
#include <sys/types.h>

pid_t proc_find(const char* name) 
{
    DIR* dir;
    struct dirent* ent;
    char* endptr;
    char buf[512];

    if (!(dir = opendir("/proc"))) {
        perror("can't open /proc");
        return -1;
    }

    while((ent = readdir(dir)) != NULL) {
        /* if endptr is not a null character, the directory is not
         * entirely numeric, so ignore it */
        long lpid = strtol(ent->d_name, &endptr, 10);
        if (*endptr != '\0') {
            continue;
        }

        /* try to open the cmdline file */
        snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "/proc/%ld/cmdline", lpid);
        FILE* fp = fopen(buf, "r");

        if (fp) {
            if (fgets(buf, sizeof(buf), fp) != NULL) {
                /* check the first token in the file, the program name */
                char* first = strtok(buf, " ");
                if (!strcmp(first, name)) {
                    fclose(fp);
                    closedir(dir);
                    return (pid_t)lpid;
                }
            }
            fclose(fp);
        }

    }

    closedir(dir);
    return -1;
}


int main(int argc, char* argv[]) 
{
    if (argc == 1) {
        fprintf("usage: %s name1 name2 ...\n", argv[0]);
        return 1;
    }

    int i;
    for(int i = 1; i < argc; ++i) {
        pid_t pid = proc_find(argv[i]);
        if (pid == -1) {
            printf("%s: not found\n", argv[i]);
        } else {
            printf("%s: %d\n", argv[i], pid);
        }
    }

    return 0;
}

Answer 2

This is the same as the code posted by John Ledbetter . It is good to refer to the file named stat in /proc/pid/ directory than cmdline since the former gives process states and process name. The cmdline file gives complete arguments with which the process is started. So that fails in some cases. Any way the idea given by John is good. Here I posted the modified code of John. I was looking for the code in c in Linux to check dhcp is running or not . With this code, I am able to do that. I hope it may be useful for someone like me.

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <dirent.h>
#include<unistd.h>

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

pid_t proc_find(const char* name) 
{
    DIR* dir;
    struct dirent* ent;
    char buf[512];

    long  pid;
    char pname[100] = {0,};
    char state;
    FILE *fp=NULL; 

    if (!(dir = opendir("/proc"))) {
        perror("can't open /proc");
        return -1;
    }

    while((ent = readdir(dir)) != NULL) {
        long lpid = atol(ent->d_name);
        if(lpid < 0)
            continue;
        snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "/proc/%ld/stat", lpid);
        fp = fopen(buf, "r");

        if (fp) {
            if ( (fscanf(fp, "%ld (%[^)]) %c", &pid, pname, &state)) != 3 ){
                printf("fscanf failed \n");
                fclose(fp);
                closedir(dir);
                return -1; 
            }
            if (!strcmp(pname, name)) {
                fclose(fp);
                closedir(dir);
                return (pid_t)lpid;
            }
            fclose(fp);
        }
    }


closedir(dir);
return -1;
}


int main(int argc, char* argv[]) 
{
    int i;
    if (argc == 1) {
        printf("usage: %s name1 name2 ...\n", argv[0]);
        return 1;
    }

    for( i = 1; i < argc; ++i) {
        pid_t pid = proc_find(argv[i]);
        if (pid == -1) {
            printf("%s: not found\n", argv[i]);
        } else {
            printf("%s: %d\n", argv[i], pid);
        }
    }

    return 0;
}