Question

I know how to check if one instance of process is running but how do I check a particular process running with different parameters for example

/usr/local/bin/foo --config /home/config1.txt
/usr/local/bin/foo --config /home/config2.txt

Following code checks only process name, how do I check if a process is running with a particular parameter?

function is_process_running ($process_name) {
    $result = array();
    exec("/sbin/pidof {$process_name}", $result);
    if(is_array($result) && isset($result[0]) && $result[0] >= 1) {
        return true; 
    }
    return false;
}

 is_process_running('/usr/local/bin/foo --config /home/config1.txt') returns true
 is_process_running('/usr/local/bin/foo --config /home/config3.txt') returns false

Answer 1

function is_process_running ($process_name) {
    $result = array();
    exec("ps -Af | grep {$process_name}", $result);

    // A loop that checks for your result and also checks 
    // that the result isn't the grep command called

    // ps -ax | grep firefox asdfasd
    // returns grep --color=auto firefox asdfasd

    return false;
}

Give it a try. The flag ‘f’ modifies the output so includes the full call.