Matthew Emmett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: ME> Dwight Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: ME> $ ps -o pid,ppid,cmd | grep "dns helper" ME> ME> tells me the pid and ppid of any "dns helper" netscape processes (and ME> grep, but I'll filter that out). Next, I take all but the largest pid ME> and kill it. This way, if the user's netscape died and they start a ME> new one right away, my script will only kill those dead-chicken ME> netscape's. Does this sound like it will work reliably?
Note that pid's aren't necessarily monotonically increasing; after they get up in the 30,000's somewhere, they'll start wrapping around to otherwise unused pid values. I can't think of a good way to do what you're trying to do, though. One thought: what about, instead of starting netscape directly, run a wrapper script that first kill -9's any running netscape, and then starts a new one? It sounds like this should do mostly what you want for a public terminal with exactly one netscape running at any given time. You could even wrap it in a shell loop to clean up if netscape happens to die. -- David Maze [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.mit.edu/~dmaze/ "Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal." -- Abra Mitchell
