Quick-and-dirty way to ensure only one instance of a shell script is running at a time

Question

What\'s a quick-and-dirty way to make sure that only one instance of a shell script is running at a given time?

Answer 1

For shell scripts, I tend to go with the mkdir over flock as it makes the locks more portable.

Either way, using set -e isn't enough. That only exits the script if any command fails. Your locks will still be left behind.

For proper lock cleanup, you really should set your traps to something like this psuedo code (lifted, simplified and untested but from actively used scripts) :

#=======================================================================
# Predefined Global Variables
#=======================================================================

TMPDIR=/tmp/myapp
[[ ! -d $TMP_DIR ]] \
    && mkdir -p $TMP_DIR \
    && chmod 700 $TMPDIR

LOCK_DIR=$TMP_DIR/lock

#=======================================================================
# Functions
#=======================================================================

function mklock {
    __lockdir="$LOCK_DIR/$(date +%s.%N).$$" # Private Global. Use Epoch.Nano.PID

    # If it can create $LOCK_DIR then no other instance is running
    if $(mkdir $LOCK_DIR)
    then
        mkdir $__lockdir  # create this instance's specific lock in queue
        LOCK_EXISTS=true  # Global
    else
        echo "FATAL: Lock already exists. Another copy is running or manually lock clean up required."
        exit 1001  # Or work out some sleep_while_execution_lock elsewhere
    fi
}

function rmlock {
    [[ ! -d $__lockdir ]] \
        && echo "WARNING: Lock is missing. $__lockdir does not exist" \
        || rmdir $__lockdir
}

#-----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Private Signal Traps Functions {{{2
#
# DANGER: SIGKILL cannot be trapped. So, try not to `kill -9 PID` or 
#         there will be *NO CLEAN UP*. You'll have to manually remove 
#         any locks in place.
#-----------------------------------------------------------------------
function __sig_exit {

    # Place your clean up logic here 

    # Remove the LOCK
    [[ -n $LOCK_EXISTS ]] && rmlock
}

function __sig_int {
    echo "WARNING: SIGINT caught"    
    exit 1002
}

function __sig_quit {
    echo "SIGQUIT caught"
    exit 1003
}

function __sig_term {
    echo "WARNING: SIGTERM caught"    
    exit 1015
}

#=======================================================================
# Main
#=======================================================================

# Set TRAPs
trap __sig_exit EXIT    # SIGEXIT
trap __sig_int INT      # SIGINT
trap __sig_quit QUIT    # SIGQUIT
trap __sig_term TERM    # SIGTERM

mklock

# CODE

exit # No need for cleanup code here being in the __sig_exit trap function

Here's what will happen. All traps will produce an exit so the function __sig_exit will always happen (barring a SIGKILL) which cleans up your locks.

Note: my exit values are not low values. Why? Various batch processing systems make or have expectations of the numbers 0 through 31. Setting them to something else, I can have my scripts and batch streams react accordingly to the previous batch job or script.