Crontab avoid multiple executions

Two ways of crontab avoiding multiple executions. The first way is to use the shell command flock to implement, The second way is to use ps aux | grep'pid'.

First Way

flock help

$ flock -h

Usage:
 flock [options] <file>|<directory> <command> [<argument>...]
 flock [options] <file>|<directory> -c <command>
 flock [options] <file descriptor number>

Manage file locks from shell scripts.

Options:
 -s, --shared             get a shared lock
 -x, --exclusive          get an exclusive lock (default)
 -u, --unlock             remove a lock
 -n, --nonblock           fail rather than wait
 -w, --timeout <secs>     wait for a limited amount of time
 -E, --conflict-exit-code <number>  exit code after conflict or timeout
 -o, --close              close file descriptor before running command
 -c, --command <command>  run a single command string through the shell
 -F, --no-fork            execute command without forking
     --verbose            increase verbosity

 -h, --help               display this help
 -V, --version            display version

For more details see flock(1).

crontab config

* * * * *  flock -xn /tmp/my_lock -c "php test.php"

Second Way

<?php
crontab_avoid_multi_exec($argv[0]);

//Do Something
sleep(20);

function crontab_avoid_multi_exec($filename) {
    //Querying and storing PID can use memcached, files, redis, and so on.
    $command = "ps aux | grep '{$filename}' | grep -v 'grep' | wc -l";
    exec($command, $count);
    if ( $count[0] > 1 ) {
        die("Crontab job can only run one!");
    }
}
?>

Attention Programing Language

When the parent process uses flock, the child process reuses the file descriptor as well.

Reference

https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.exec.php
https://www.cnblogs.com/wangxusummer/p/4933492.html