How do I check with a Bash script if an application is running?

Question

I have a gnome-run application in my home folder. I have now added the application to run when I press Meta+R (I added it in in CCSM). I run the application by executing ./gnome-run in my home folder.
I can't find any trace of the application process in the output of ps -A.

The problem is that if I have the gnome-run program open and I press the key combination I want the application to close. Is there a way to create a bash file that checks if the applications is running? If it is then close it, else launch it.

have you tried `pgrep`? eg `pgrep xterm` returns the pids of my running xterm's. You could check if your app is already running using this (run `pgrep yourapp` and check if it's return code is 0 or 1 using `echo $?`). — romeovs, Apr 01 '12 at 18:16

romeovs · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-02T22:20:52.437

This shell script should handle the starting and stopping of any program:

#!/bin/bash

BASECMD=${1%%\ *}
PID=$(pgrep "$BASECMD")
if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
    echo "at least one instance of "$BASECMD" found, killing all instances"
    kill $PID
else
    echo "no running instances of "$BASECMD" found, starting one"
    $1
 fi

let's say you saved it under ~/mystarter, you can run any command with it using ~/mystarter <name>, eg in your case, bind Meta+R to:

~/mystarter gnome-run

and make sure the script is executable: chmod u+x ~/mystarter. Also it's probably best to put it somewhere in your PATH, so you don't have to type it's full location every time.

As for the fact that gnome-run doesn't show up in ps -A, make sure that gnome run itself isn't a script that launches the actual process. Check if there is a difference between ps -A | wc -l before and after launching it (this counts all running processes).

Edit:

Since you've accepted the answer, I thought I'd add support for running commands that have commandline arguments, so that this might become a place of reference. Run a command like so:

 ./mystarter 'cmd args'

eg:

./mystarter 'ncmpcpp -c ~/.ncmpcpp'

The command just looks up ncmpcpp to see if it's running already, but executes the full command (with arguments) when ncmpcpp wasn't running.

How do I check with a Bash script if an application is running?

1 Answers1

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