Recently, I started to configure few of my DBA shell scripts in Linux Crontab.

Yesterday, I shared an important article on skip the execution of your shell script if it is running already.

If you forget to put the first line of your shell script something like “#!/bin/sh” and bash shell script something like “#!/bin/bash”, you cannot get the name of your running shell script.

It’s called a shebang and tells the parent shell which interpreter should be used to execute the script.

When you are running shell script in Linux, the operating system will look at the first few bytes of the file to decide the format of the program and how to execute it.

If you don’t use “#!/bin/sh” or “#!/bin/bash” on the first line, then the system will treat all the commands in that script as different commands.

So I would suggest please start to add it.

Check below screenshots without #!/bin/bash:

I created sample running.bash file to explain the importance “#!/bin/sh” or “#!/bin/bash”.

Check below screenshots with #!/bin/bash:

We configured lots of cron job in our production Linux – PostgreSQL Server. Different schedules like monitor the database performance, monitor the backup process, take a database backup, replicate a database copy.

We set few monitor cron jobs at every 5 minutes. Now the situation is, few monitoring scripts are running even more than 5 minutes, and as per the scheduled, same script could start the execution after 5 minutes.

Now, the same script is running more than one time.

We should monitor this kind of situation, and we should prevent the next execution of the same script if it is already in running state. It also helps us to reduce an unnecessary load on the database server.

I prepared below two options; you can embed any one of it in your shell script.

Option script 1:

if pidof -x $(basename $0) > /dev/null; then
  for p in $(pidof -x $(basename $0)); do
    if [ $p -ne $$ ]; then
	echo "*****************************************************************"
	echo "  ***Warning*** Script $0 is already running...So existing...    "
	echo "*****************************************************************"
	exit 1
    fi
  done
fi

Option script 2:

isrunning=`ps -ef | grep $(basename $0) | grep -v $$ | grep -v grep | wc -l`
 
if [ "$isrunning" -ne 0 ]; then
   echo "**************************************************************"
   echo "  ***Warning*** Script $0 is already running... So exiting... "
   echo "**************************************************************"
   exit 1
fi