How to get the PID of a process that is piped to another process in Bash?

Question

Hi,

I am trying to implement a simple log server in Bash. It should take a file as a parameter and serve it on a port with netcat.

( tail -f $1 & ) | nc -l -p 9977

But the problem is that when the netcat terminates, tail is left behind running. (Clarification: If I don't fork the tail process it will continue to run forever even the netcat terminates.)

If I somehow know the PID of the tail then I could kill it afterwards.
Obviously, using $! will return the PID of netcat.

How can I get the PID of the tail process?

Answer 1

One way would be to simply do a ps -ef and grep for tail with your script ppid

Answer 2

Maybe you could use a fifo, so that you can capture the pid of the first process, e.g.:

FIFO=my_fifo

rm -f $FIFO
mkfifo $FIFO

tail -f $1 > $FIFO &
TAIL_PID=$!

cat $FIFO | nc -l -p 9977

kill $TAIL_PID

rm -f $FIFO

Answer 3

Have you tried:

nc -l -p 9977 -c "tail -f $1"

(untested)

Or -e with a scriptfile if your nc doesn't have -c. You may have to have an nc that was compiled with the GAPING_SECURITY_HOLE option. Yes, you should infer appropriate caveats from that option name.

Answer 4

Finally, I have managed to find the tail process using ps. Thanks to the idea from ennuikiller.

I have used the ps to grep tail from the args and kill it. It is kind of a hack but it worked. :)

If you can find a better way please share.

Here is the complete script:
(Latest version can be found here: http://docs.karamatli.com/dotfiles/bin/logserver)

if [ -z "$1" ]; then
    echo Usage: $0 LOGFILE [PORT]
    exit -1
fi
if [ -n "$2" ]; then
    PORT=$2
else
    PORT=9977
fi

TAIL_CMD="tail -f $1"

function kill_tail {
    # find and kill the tail process that is detached from the current process
    TAIL_PID=$(/bin/ps -eo pid,args | grep "$TAIL_CMD" | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $1 }')
    kill $TAIL_PID
}
trap "kill_tail; exit 0" SIGINT SIGTERM

while true; do
    ( $TAIL_CMD & ) | nc -l -p $PORT -vvv
    kill_tail
done

Answer 5

Write tail's PID to file descriptor 3, and then capture it from there.

( tail -f $1 & echo $! >&3 ) 3>pid | nc -l -p 9977
kill $(<pid)