[linux] What is the best way to ensure only one instance of a Bash script is running?

I had the same problem, and came up with a template that uses lockfile, a pid file that holds the process id number, and a kill -0 $(cat $pid_file) check to make aborted scripts not stop the next run. This creates a foobar-$USERID folder in /tmp where the lockfile and pid file lives.

You can still call the script and do other things, as long as you keep those actions in alertRunningPS.

#!/bin/bash

user_id_num=$(id -u)
pid_file="/tmp/foobar-$user_id_num/foobar-$user_id_num.pid"
lock_file="/tmp/foobar-$user_id_num/running.lock"
ps_id=$$

function alertRunningPS () {
    local PID=$(cat "$pid_file" 2> /dev/null)
    echo "Lockfile present. ps id file: $PID"
    echo "Checking if process is actually running or something left over from crash..."
    if kill -0 $PID 2> /dev/null; then
        echo "Already running, exiting"
        exit 1
    else
        echo "Not running, removing lock and continuing"
        rm -f "$lock_file"
        lockfile -r 0 "$lock_file"
    fi
}

echo "Hello, checking some stuff before locking stuff"

# Lock further operations to one process
mkdir -p /tmp/foobar-$user_id_num
lockfile -r 0 "$lock_file" || alertRunningPS

# Do stuff here
echo -n $ps_id > "$pid_file"
echo "Running stuff in ONE ps"

sleep 30s

rm -f "$lock_file"
rm -f "$pid_file"
exit 0

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