Killing multiple instances of the script from the script itself

Question

I've couple instances of script.sh running in parallel, doing the same thing, running in background.

I'm trying to use a function to kill all the current running scripts when executed.

So, for example, ./script.sh -start will start the script (which I can run few in parallel) and when I execute ./script.sh -kill will kill all instances of the script.

f() {
    procName=`basename $0`
    pidsToKill=`ps -ef | grep $procName | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $2 }'`
    if [[ $pidsToKill ]]; then
        for i in $pidsToKill; do
            kill -9 $i
        done
        echo "Killed running scripts."
    else
        echo "No opened scripts to kill"
    fi
}

For some reason, sometimes it kill couple of the scripts and sometimes returns an error.

I've figured a way to solve this, but I want to understand why this one doesn't work. Any ideas?

Answer 1

The script may be killing itself. You might try running the for loop inside a separate subshell ( for i in $pidsToKill; do kill -9 $i; done; echo All dead. ) & and then exit your script.