Start and Stop program

[saj0577]

After looking at compiz-switch/ (http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/01/07/toggle-desktop-effects-with-compiz-switch/) i decided i wanted to make a simple program that does the following.

Checks to see if a program is running (i.e apache, amsn)
If its running stops it if its not running starts it.

What language would be best to do this and how would i go about doing this. i.e checking if a program is running.

Saj

[nanotube]

After looking at compiz-switch/ (http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/01/07/toggle-desktop-effects-with-compiz-switch/) i decided i wanted to make a simple program that does the following.

Checks to see if a program is running (i.e apache, amsn)
If its running stops it if its not running starts it.

What language would be best to do this and how would i go about doing this. i.e checking if a program is running.

Saj

seems that this is a good job for a shell script. something along the lines of the code below should do the trick:


if $(ps ax |grep 'yourprogram' |grep -v 'grep'; then
pkill 'yourprogram'
else
/path/to/yourprogram &

[ghostdog74]

#!/bin/bash
if [ ! -z "$(pidof program)" ] ;then
pkill program
else
/path/program &
fi

[Jussi Kukkonen]

Plain killing may work, but the right way to do something like this is to use start_stop_daemon with PIDFILE -- take a look at just about any startup script in /etc/init.d (hal should be a good example).

[saj0577]

Cheers.

Saj