10-08-2001
Gee, thanks for the kind words guys!
No, you cannot just assume the next pid will be the current pid +1. You're on a multi-user machine. Stuff like cron runs all the time. If someone else forks first, they get the next pid. Also in a multi-cpu system, each cpu will usually reserve a chunk of 10 or so pids at once to cut down on spinlocks. Finally, pids recycle after pid 32,000.
The worst consequence of the sleep program in the background is that it is consuming a proc table entry. Too many of these and eventually you bump into maxuprc and cannot fork anymore. As long as that was not an issue, I'd just let it run. Remember that it will take code to remember or find the pid and then kill the pid. The load that this code would put on the system is trivial, but the only payback is the early death of a sleep statement...it can't make a profit.
If you really got to nail that last sleep process, a "kill $(ps -f | grep [s]leep |awk '{print $2}')" should get it.
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kill(2) System Calls Manual kill(2)
Name
kill - send signal to a process
Syntax
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <signal.h>
kill(pid, sig)
pid_t pid;
int sig;
Description
The system call sends the signal sig to a process specified by the process number pid. The sig can be a signal specified in a call or it
can be 0. If the sig is 0, error checking is performed, but a signal is not sent. This call can be used to check the validity of pid.
The sending and receiving processes must have the same effective user ID, otherwise this call is restricted to the superuser with the
exception of the signal SIGCONT. The signal SIGCONT can always be sent to a child or grandchild of the current process.
If the process number is 0, the signal is sent to all other processes in the sender's process group.
If the process number is negative but not -1, the signal is sent to all processes whose process-group-id is equal to the absolute value of
the process number.
The above two options are variants of
If the process number is -1, and the user is the superuser, the signal is broadcast for all processes except to system processes and the
process sending the signal.
Processes may send signals to themselves.
Environment
System Five
POSIX
When your program is compiled in the System V or POSIX environment, a signal is sent if either the real or effective uid of the sending
process matches the real or saved-set-uid (as described in ) of the receiving process. In addition, any process can use a pid of -1, and
the signal is sent to all processes subject to these permission checks.
In POSIX mode, the pid argument is of type pid_t.
Return Values
Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned. Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned, and is set to indicate the error.
Diagnostics
The system call fails under the following conditions:
[EINVAL] The sig is not a valid signal number.
[EPERM] The sending process is not the superuser, and its effective user ID does not match the effective user ID of the receiving
process.
[ESRCH] No process can be found corresponding to that specified by pid.
See Also
execve(2), getpgrp(2), getpid(2), killpg(2), sigvec(2), pause(3)
kill(2)