Thread: Control instance

Hello All,

I have a program that run as a daemon. My problem seems to be simple but I didn't find the answer anywhere.

How do I alow only one instance of my program to run ?

Thanks in advance,

I'm assuming these are Linux Daemons right?

Yes, it is running on a Linux machine and gcc version 3.3.3 !

I've create a daemon like this:

Code:

int daemon(int nochdir, int noclose)
{
        int fd;

        switch (fork()) {
                case -1:
                        return -1;
                case 0:
                        break;
                default:
                        _exit(0);
        }

        if (setsid() == -1) return -1;
        if (!nochdir) chdir("/");
        if (noclose) return 0;

        fd = open(_PATH_DEVNULL, O_RDWR, 0);
        if (fd != -1) {
                dup2(fd, STDIN_FILENO);
                dup2(fd, STDOUT_FILENO);
                dup2(fd, STDERR_FILENO);
                if (fd > 2) close(fd);
        }
        return 0;
}

Thanks !

Hello All,

Any help ?

Thanks again,

Here are a number of possible ways, none of them ideal.

1. Parse the output of 'ps' looking for instances of your process

Code:

FILE *fp = popen( "ps -e", "r" );
while ( fgets( buff, sizeof buff, fp ) ) {
}
pclose( fp );

Disadvantage - syntax of the ps command isn't portable.

2. create a lock file - which is typically the name of your daemon and its process ID
Eg. /tmp/mydaemon12345.lock
Cases are
- lock file missing -> not running so go ahead and be the one
- lock file present, but process 12345 doesn't exist -> previous instance died badly
- lock file present, but process 12345 isn't mydaemon -> previous instance died badly
- lock file present and process 12345 is mydaemon -> already running.
You need to make good use of atexit() and signal() to install handlers which remove the lock file in all the ways in which your program can exit (either normally or via a crash).