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phpcroncommand-line-interfaceinfinite-loopterminate

When does a PHP script stop executing when called from CLI?


I basically have a cron job calling one script every minute. Script immediately stops, if previous script is still running (checks previous script's activity time).

So I made a bug, and the script went in to an infinite loop (I know it was called from by cron atleast one time). I created a fix and uploaded it to the server, but I'm still wondering:

  1. How long will the bugged script run?
  2. How can I know if it is still running?
  3. What does terminate a script and why?

The script just echoes out the same text over and over again.

P.S. PHP's max execution time within the script is set to 0 (infinite) and I don't have a direct access to the server, only FTP.


Solution

  • How can I know if it is still running?

    Just set up a new cron job, but have the cron command be a something that helps you debug: a useful one would be

    ps -af | grep php > /some/path/to/mylogfile.txt
    

    the ps command lists info on running processes. with those flags, part of the output will be the original linux command that started the process, and so we can grep the line and look for php because the origional command was probably something like:

    php myscript.php
    

    the output is redirected to mylogfile.txt for you to manually read after the cron job runs.

    the process id should be part of the output. you can then use the kill command on that process id, again by just entering the command as a fake cron job.