Single instance .NET Core App (or making crontab run only 1 instance of my app)

Question

I would like to execute a .NET Core Application on a schedule in Linux using crontab. It's a long running operation and I don't want another instance to be run if a previous execution hasn't finished yet. In other words, I don't want crontab to execute more than one instance of my .NET Core App at a given time.

Is there any way to avoid it? I would prefer not to modify the code of my app. Maybe there is an option for crontab to avoid concurrency. I'm not a Linux expert (yet) :)

Answer 1

For those who want to check instances from code you may use named mutex like this

const string mutexName = @"Global\appName";

var mutex = new Mutex(true, mutexName, out var createdNew);

if (!createdNew)
{
    Console.WriteLine(mutexName + " is already running! Exiting the application.");
    return;
}

Be sure that your mutex name begins with "Global\".