Locking a file to verify a single execution of a service. How reliable?

Posted by Camilo Díaz on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Camilo Díaz
Published on 2010-05-05T16:17:07Z Indexed on 2010/05/05 16:48 UTC
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Hello,

I am deploying a little service to an UNIX(AIX) system. I want to check if there is no active instance of that service running when starting it. How reliable is to implement that check like this?

  1. Try to acquire a lock on a file (w/ FileChannel)
  2. If succeeds, keep lock and continue execution
  3. If fails, exit and refuse to run the main body

I am aware of software like the Tanuki wrapper, however, I'm longing for a simpler(maybe not portable) solution.


Regarding PIDFILE(s): I want to avoid using them if possible, as I don't have administrative rights on the machine, neither knowledge in AIX's shell programming.

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