Lightweight process manager

• run just one instance at a time of some command and unique set of arguments (useful for cronjobs, e.g.)
• run this instance of a command, killing others (useful for a hard restart of a command, e.g.)
• keep a command running, whether it succeeds or fails or terminates (useful for forcing retries/restarts, e.g.)
• run a command until it succeeds (useful for wget/curl downloads or rsyncs, e.g.)
• run a command until it fails (while/true type functionality)

run-one COMMAND [ARGS]

run-this-one COMMAND [ARGS]

run-one-constantly COMMAND [ARGS]

keep-one-running COMMAND [ARGS]

run-one-until-success COMMAND [ARGS]

run-one-until-failure COMMAND [ARGS]

run-one is very lightweight process manager. It functions as a wrapper script that runs no more than one unique instance of some command with a unique set of arguments.

This is often useful with cronjobs, when you want no more than one copy running at a time.

It's also useful when you don't have a full init system such as sysvinit, upstart, or systemd available.

run-this-one is exactly like run-one, except that it will use pgrep(1) and kill(1) to find and kill any running processes owned by the user and matching the target commands and arguments. Note that run-this-one will block while trying to kill matching processes, until all matching processes are dead.

run-one-constantly operates exactly like run-one except that it respawns "COMMAND [ARGS]" any time COMMAND exits (zero or non-zero).

keep-one-running is an alias for run-one-constantly.

run-one-until-success operates exactly like run-one-constantly except that it respawns "COMMAND [ARGS]" until COMMAND exits successfully (ie, exits zero).

run-one-until-failure operates exactly like run-one-constantly except that it respawns "COMMAND [ARGS]" until COMMAND exits with failure (ie, exits non-zero).

In one shell:

 $ run-one rsync -azP $HOME [email protected]:/srv/backup
 foouser/
 foouser/.bash_history
       40298 100%   37.13MB/s    0:00:00 (xfer#1, to-check=3509/3516)
 foouser/.viminfo
       20352 100%   98.39kB/s    0:00:00 (xfer#3, to-check=3478/3516)
 ...
 sent 746228 bytes  received 413059 bytes  36802.76 bytes/sec
 total size is 3732890955  speedup is 3219.99

In another shell, while the first is still running:

 $ run-one rsync -azP $HOME [email protected]:/srv/backup
 $ echo $?
 1

Another example... In one shell:

 $ run-one top

In another shell:

 $ run-one top
 $ echo $?
 1
 $ run-this-one top
 top - 17:15:36 up  1:43,  3 users,  load average: 1.05, 1.04, 1.00
 Tasks: 170 total,   1 running, 169 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
 ...

And note that the process in the first shell was killed.

You might want to keep one ssh connection up and running all the time, with:

 $ run-one-constantly ssh -N -C -L 3128:localhost:3128 -L 7778:localhost:7778 example.com &

flock(1), kill(1), pgrep(1)

This manpage and the utility was written by Dustin Kirkland for Ubuntu systems (but may be used by others). Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 3 published by the Free Software Foundation.

On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL, or on the web at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt.