How can I ensure that only one instance of a script is running at a time (mutual exclusion)?
We need some means of mutual exclusion. One way is to use a "lock": any number of processes can try to acquire the lock simultaneously, but only one of them will succeed.
How can we implement this using shell scripts? Some people suggest creating a lock file, and checking for its presence:
# locking example -- WRONG lockfile=/tmp/myscript.lock if [ -f "$lockfile" ] then # lock is already held echo >&2 "cannot acquire lock, giving up: $lockfile" exit 0 else # nobody owns the lock > "$lockfile" # create the file #...continue script fi
This example does not work, because there is a time window between checking and creating the file. Assume two processes are running the code at the same time. Both check if the lockfile exists, and both get the result that it does not exist. Now both processes assume they have acquired the lock -- a disaster waiting to happen. We need an atomic check-and-create operation, and fortunately there is one: mkdir, the command to create a directory:
# locking example -- CORRECT # Bourne lockdir=/tmp/myscript.lock if mkdir "$lockdir" then # directory did not exist, but was created successfully echo >&2 "successfully acquired lock: $lockdir" # continue script else echo >&2 "cannot acquire lock, giving up on $lockdir" exit 0 fi
Here, even when two processes call mkdir at the same time, only one process can succeed at most. This atomicity of check-and-create is ensured at the operating system kernel level.
Instead of using mkdir we could also have used the program to create a symbolic link, ln -s.
Note that we cannot use mkdir -p to automatically create missing path components: mkdir -p does not return an error if the directory exists already, but that's the feature we rely upon to ensure mutual exclusion.
Now let's spice up this example by automatically removing the lock when the script finishes:
# POSIX (maybe Bourne?) lockdir=/tmp/myscript.lock if mkdir "$lockdir" then echo >&2 "successfully acquired lock" # Remove lockdir when the script finishes, or when it receives a signal trap 'rm -rf "$lockdir"' 0 # remove directory when script finishes # Optionally create temporary files in this directory, because # they will be removed automatically: tmpfile=$lockdir/filelist else echo >&2 "cannot acquire lock, giving up on $lockdir" exit 0 fi
This example is much better. There is still the problem that a stale lock could remain when the script is terminated with a signal not caught (or signal 9, SIGKILL), or could be created by a user (either accidentally or maliciously), but it's a good step towards reliable mutual exclusion. Charles Duffy has contributed an example that may remedy the "stale lock" problem.
If you're on linux, you can also get the benefit of using flock(1). flock(1) ties a file descriptor to a lock file. There are multiple ways to use it, one possibility to solve the multiple instance problem is:
exec 9>/path/to/lock/file if ! flock -n 9 ; then echo "another instance is running"; exit 1 fi # this now runs under the lock until 9 is closed (it will be closed automatically when the script ends)
flock can also be used to protect only a part of your script, see the man page for more information.
Discussion
I believe using if (set -C; >$lockfile); then ... is equally safe if not safer. The Bash source uses open(filename, flags|O_EXCL, mode); which should be atomic on almost all platforms (with the exception of some versions of NFS where mkdir may not be atomic either). I haven't traced the path of the flags variable, which must contain O_CREAT, nor have I looked at any other shells. I wouldn't suggest using this until someone else can backup my claims. --Andy753421
- Using set -C does not work with ksh88. Ksh88 does not use O_EXCL, when you set noclobber (-C). --jrw32982
Are you sure mkdir has problems with being atomic on NFS? I thought that affected only open, but I'm not really sure. -- BeJonas 2008-07-24 01:22:59
For more discussion on these issues, see ProcessManagement.