UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

if filename.txt is in used, exit, else continue.

i tried to use fuser -c filename.txt, but returned bunch out PIDs eventhough filename.txt is not in used.

any idea ?

define 'not in used'?
What processes the returned PIDs correspond to?

vi, cat.

Isn't "fuser -c" for filesystems and "fuser -f" for files?

fuser -f worked, but now i ran into another issue. my script:

fuser -f file1 > /tmp/active.log

if [ -s /tmp/active.log ] && [ -s /tmp/file2 ]
then
echo "exiting"
exit
else
mv /tmp/file2 /tmp/file2.timestamp
fi

since this crontab runs * * * * *, mv /tmp/file2 /tmp/file2.timestamp "A file or directory in the path name does not exist".

There is much variation in the behaviour of the "fuser" command.
What Operating System and version are you running?
What Shell are you using?

The usual issue with "fuser" is that it outputs part of the output to STDOUT and part to STDERR. Unfortunately the various versions are not consistent.

To find out:

Code:

fuser filename 2>logfile1.log  1>logfile2.log

You need to try files which have processes attached and files which do not have processes attached and see what happens.

On my unix version the PIDs are output to STDOUT (channel 1) and the surrounding text is output to STDERR (channel 2). I've seen different variations.

On what OSes ? What you observe is the expected and documented fuser behavior on all Unix/Unix like OSes I'm aware of (Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Tru64, Irix, Gnu/Linux based Oses, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, ...). It has been standardized a couple of decades ago to output pids on stdout and everything else on stderr.