I have Process Id for one background process and currently it is running state. I want to see the return code after the above running process is done.

for the forground process normally I use "echo $?". But how to get the return code for my background process on UNIX/Linux??

Thanks in advance!

Sriram

 
$ cat k.sh
#!/bin/sh
echo "TEST"
grep test a.txt &
wait $!
echo $? 
 
$ sh k.sh
TEST
grep: can't open a.txt
2
 
$ echo test > a.txt
 
$ sh k.sh
TEST
test
0

Hi,

Thanks for your input. But my requirement is little bit different.

My running process is not child process of my current process. So it is triggered by some other user and I would like to monitor that process and see the return code. Wait command will work only for child process.

Pls help me...

Within the script which runs the process, record the exit status to a file. Then monitor the file from your monitoring script.

Ok, is there any other way I can capture using command?

If you are on Solaris, you could use dtrace for this. Create a file exit.d as

#!/usr/sbin/dtrace -s

syscall::rexit:
/execname == "ls"/
{
    printf ("ls exited with exitcode %d\n", arg0);
}

dtrace: script './exit.d' matched 2 probes
CPU     ID                    FUNCTION:NAME
  7 105722                      rexit:entry ls exited with exitcode 0
  3 105722                      rexit:entry ls exited with exitcode 2
  1 105722                      rexit:entry ls exited with exitcode 0