how to get ps -ef to grep the PID of a process

[twtandigi.com.my]

hi Guru-s,

Currently i have crontab running, but it seems to not to be able to get the /usr/sbin/named to start.
i have tried to tie it down with the ps -ef | grep named but nothing seems to work.
i have heard that this can be tied with the pid of the process. but i am not sure how to get it to work. have anyone tried it out and how should i code it in the HP-UX 11.

confused...

[Bill Hassell]

Don't use grep! The man page for ps has exactly what you need. This will give you the pid for named:

NAMEDPID=$(UNIX95=1 ps -C named -o pid tail -1)

If $NAMEDPID has just PID, then named is not running. Otherwise, NAMEDPID has the named process ID.

However, this is way too complicated to locate named since it maintains it's own file with it's pid: /var/run/named.pid (man named)

[Bill Hassell]

Oops, the pipe symbol got dropped. Here's the command line again:

NAMEDPID=$(UNIX95=1 ps -C named -o pid | tail -1)

Just a bit explanation. UNIX95 enables special (XPG4) behavior. The -C option is a process name finder and never uses grep. It is an exact match so -C sh will not find ksh (unlike grep). The -o option allows you to customize the ps columns you'd like to see.

Still other options in ps that are often overlooked:

-p
-f
-H (shows process hierarchy-requires UNIX95)

[Joseph Loo · Accepted solution]

hi,

as mentioned in earlier post, if named server is not running or configure to run, i.e. NAMED=1, you will not be able to "grep" named.

regards.