Temporarily prevent linux from shutting down

Question

I have a backup script that runs in the background daily on my linux (Fedora 9) computer. If the computer is shut down while the backup is in progress the backup may be dama

Answer 1

More a get-you-started than a complete solution, you could alias the shutdown command away, and then use a script like

#!/bin/sh
ps -ef|grep backupprocess|grep -v grep > /dev/null
if [ "$?" -eq 0 ]; then
 echo Backup in progress: aborted shutdown
 exit 0
else
 echo Backup not in progress: shutting down
 shutdown-alias -h now
fi

saved in the user's path as shutdown. I expect there would be some variation dependant on how your users invoke shutdown (Window manager icons/command line) and perhaps for different distros too.