Don't mess with grepping, or even running ps. Get the pid, and kill 0, $pid; it to see if it's alive. If you must run ps, don't grep, but call it like ps h 1234 where 1234 is the pid wanted, and see if it outputs anything or even its exit status.

In reply to Re: How best to see if syslogd is running? by ambrus
in thread How best to see if syslogd is running? by Plankton

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