Linux/Unix command to determine if process is running?

Question

I need a platform independent (Linux/Unix|OSX) shell/bash command that will determine if a specific process is running. e.g. mysqld, httpd... What

Answer 1

This should work on most flavours of Unix, BSD and Linux:

PATH=/usr/ucb:${PATH} ps aux | grep httpd | grep -v grep

Tested on:

• SunOS 5.10 [Hence the PATH=...]
• Linux 2.6.32 (CentOS)
• Linux 3.0.0 (Ubuntu)
• Darwin 11.2.0
• FreeBSD 9.0-STABLE
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5