PID lock file in python

I have a python script which when running on large disks can (rarely) run on for like more then a hour, and then I have got this cron setup which runs this script and the cron is set to run every hour. This means I can have several instances of the same Python script at one time. In order to get rid of that kind of scenario I did basic style of pid lock file implementation today:

#This is to check if there is already a lock file existing#
if os.access(os.path.expanduser("~/.lockfile.vestibular.lock"), os.F_OK):
        #if the lockfile is already there then check the PID number 
        #in the lock file
        pidfile = open(os.path.expanduser("~/.lockfile.vestibular.lock"), "r")
        pidfile.seek(0)
        old_pd = pidfile.readline()
        # Now we check the PID from lock file matches to the current
        # process PID
        if os.path.exists("/proc/%s" % old_pd):
                print "You already have an instance of the program running"
                print "It is running as process %s," % old_pd
                sys.exit(1)
        else:
                print "File is there but the program is not running"
                print "Removing lock file for the: %s as it can be there
                because of the program last time it was run" % oldpid
                os.remove(os.path.expanduser("~/.lockfile.vestibular.lock"))

#This is part of code where we put a PID file in the lock file
pidfile = open(os.path.expanduser("~/.lockfile.vestibular.lock"), "w")
pidfile.write("%s" % os.getpid())
pidfile.close

Hope this can help someone doing the same.

—
Shoaib Mir
shoaibmir[@]gmail.com

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