Question

Bash script should check if a certain process is running more than a certain number of minutes, and kill it if does.

I can get the running time by something like

ps -aux | grep ProgramName | grep -v grep | awk '{print $10}'

That gives 9:47.31 for instance. But where do I go further and check if that is greater than, say 10 minutes threshold?

Answer 1

Here is the awk 1 liner you’ll need for your use case:

ps -o etime -C ProgramName | awk -v MAX=600 '{split($0, a, ":"); if (length(a)==2) sec=a[1]*60+a[2]; else if (length(a)==3) sec=a[1]*3600+a[2]*60+a[3]; if (sec>MAX) print "Elapsed"; else print "Not Elapsed"}'

Also note that ps -o etime -C ProgramName gives you the time since ProgramName has been running so you don’t need to use your overly complicated command to get this time.

IMPORTANT: Also remember that for the processes that have been running for more than a day you will get output of ps command as something like 1-21:48:48. I don’t have this case covered in my awk command but you can use the same awk's split command as I have shown above.

UPDATE: As per the comment below, use this version for FreeBSD or any other flavor of Unix (eg: Mac) where -C ProgramName option is not available.

ps -o etime=,command= | awk -v MAX=600 '/ProgramName/ && !/awk/ {split($1, a, ":"); if (length(a)==2) sec=a[1]*60+a[2]; else if (length(a)==3) sec=a[1]*3600+a[2]*60+a[3]; if (sec>MAX) print "Elapsed"; else print "Not Elapsed"}'