I have a cron script that executes a PHP script every 10 minutes. The script checks a queue and processes the data in the queue. Sometimes the queue has enough data to last over 10 minutes of processing, creating the potential of two scripts trying to access the same data. I want to be able to detect whether the script is already running to prevent launching multiple copies of the script. I thought about creating a database flag that says that a script is processing, but if the script were ever to crash it would leave it in the positive state. Is there an easy way to tell if the PHP script is already running from withing a PHP or shell script?
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If you need it to be absolutely crash-proof, you should use semaphores, which are released automatically when php ends the specific request handling.
A simpler approach would be to create a DB record or a file at the beginning of the execution, and remove it at the end. You could always check the “age” of that record/file, and if it’s older than say 3 times the normal script execution, suppose it crashed and remove it.
There’s no “silver bullet”, it just depends on your needs.