Run cron job only if it isn't already running

Question

Use flock. It's new. It's better.

Now you don't have to write the code yourself. Check out more reasons here: https://serverfault.com/a/82863

/usr/bin/flock -n /tmp/my.lockfile /usr/local/bin/my_script

I do this for a print spooler program that I wrote, it's just a shell script:

#!/bin/sh
if ps -ef | grep -v grep | grep doctype.php ; then
        exit 0
else
        /home/user/bin/doctype.php >> /home/user/bin/spooler.log &
        #mailing program
        /home/user/bin/simplemail.php "Print spooler was not running...  Restarted." 
        exit 0
fi

It runs every two minutes and is quite effective. I have it email me with special information if for some reason the process is not running.

As others have stated, writing and checking a PID file is a good solution. Here's my bash implementation:

#!/bin/bash

mkdir -p "$HOME/tmp"
PIDFILE="$HOME/tmp/myprogram.pid"

if [ -e "${PIDFILE}" ] && (ps -u $(whoami) -opid= |
                           grep -P "^\s*$(cat ${PIDFILE})$" &> /dev/null); then
  echo "Already running."
  exit 99
fi

/path/to/myprogram > $HOME/tmp/myprogram.log &

echo $! > "${PIDFILE}"
chmod 644 "${PIDFILE}"

It's suprising that no one mentioned about run-one. I've solved my problem with this.

 apt-get install run-one

then add run-one before your crontab script

*/20 * * * * * run-one python /script/to/run/awesome.py

Check out this askubuntu SE answer. You can find link to a detailed information there as well.

Don't try to do it via cron. Have cron run a script no matter what, and then have the script decide if the program is running and start it if necessary (note you can use Ruby or Python or your favorite scripting language to do this)

You can also do it as a one-liner directly in your crontab:

* * * * * [ `ps -ef|grep -v grep|grep <command>` -eq 0 ] && <command>