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Eray
Asked: 2013-08-18 09:39:06 +0800 CST

Repetitive Tasks with bash scripting

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I have a php console app and an Ubuntu server. I'm executing the app with this basic command:

php app.php

I want to execute it repetitively, but cronjobs is not suitable for me. Instead, I want it to execute such that when app.php finishes working it will be executed again immediately (like an infinity loop), rather than being executed again every X minutes. So I made this bash script: 

while true; do
php app.php
done

this solves my problem, but the usage of while true seems evil. Is it possible to stop this bash script, if necessary? Or can you tell me a better way to do this?

(app.php file , fetches a long list of website URLs and their content. It's like a web spider. I connect to the server via ssh , execute bash script with nohup, and then close terminal. )

bash

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Here is an example about what you can do:

    #!/bin/bash

while true; do
    if [ -t 0 ]; then stty -echo -icanon time 0 min 0; fi

    keypress=''
    while [ "x$keypress" = "x" ]; do
        #do something... in your case:
        php app.php
        #end of 'do something'

        read keypress
    done

    if [ -t 0 ]; then stty sane; fi

    echo "You pressed '$keypress' for pause."
    read -p 'Press [Enter] key to continue or [Ctrl+C] to finish...'
done

    To pause you can press any key without Enter. To continue you must to press Enter. To finish you must to press Ctrl+C.

    If you run the script in background using:

    nohup <name_of_script> &

    you can stop it using the following commands:

    ps -ef | grep <name_of_script> #to find the pid of the running script
kill -9 <pid_of_your_running_script>
    • 1

  2. I think you can use your script and when you want to stop it you open a terminal and:
    1. Get the pid of script: ps -ef | grep "mycript"
    2. Terminate kill -s 15 PID or kill kill -s 9 PID it.

    • 0