How to kill printer PIDs except the spooler PID?

UNIX for Beginners Q & A
1

First of all, I'd like to congratulate this big family and all members for all the work you do!
I'm trying to do an script or sentence which kills an specific printers PIDs: all printers PIDs older than 72h running in the server.

Steps:
1.- List all printers PID sorting by date:

ps -eaf | grep -e "UID" -e "lpsched" | grep -v grep | sort -rk6
   UID   PID  PPID  C    STIME TTY       TIME COMMAND
    lp 22948 11814  0 12:36:58 ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
    lp 19332 11814  0 08:45:17 ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
    lp 29793 11814  0  Sep 30  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
    lp 11814     1 12  Aug 28  ?        238:08 /usr/sbin/lpsched
    lp 18598 11814  0  Oct 17  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
    lp 26198 11814  0  Oct 16  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
    lp 24981 11814  0  Oct 16  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
    lp 13996 11814  0  Oct 13  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
    lp  5802 11814  0  Oct 12  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
    lp 24510 11814  0  Oct 10  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
    lp  4585 11814  0  Oct  8  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
    lp 26585 11814  0  Oct  7  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
    lp 25739 11814  0  Oct  2  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched

2.-Isolate PPID = spooler ID (no killed)

ps -eaf | grep -e lpsched | grep -v grep | awk '{if ($3>1) print $3}' | tail -n 1
   11814

3.-PIDs to be killed (no kills the spooler PPID "11814"):

ps -eaf | grep -e lpsched | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | pgrep -e 72:00:00 lpsched
  24510
  4585
  29793
  11814
  26585
  13996
  25739
  11319
  5802

4.- Kill all the PIDs of step 3 except the spooler PPID 11814.

???
2

Welcome to the forum.

I'm not sure I can follow your specification, as it sometimes seems to

  • contradict your sample code / output (e.g. "no kills the spooler PPID "11814"" - are you talking of the process ID or the parent pr. ID?)
  • refer to data NOT in the sample: 72:00:00
  • use non-existent options ( -e to pgrep ; not found for pgrep on linux nor FreeBSD, only for pkill )

SHOULD you want to kill the processes that are childs to the lp root / parent process identified by PPID = 1, try

ps -eaf | awk 'BEGIN {printf "kill "} /lpsched$/ && $3 > 1 {printf "%s ", $2} END {printf ORS}' 
kill 22948 19332 29793 18598 26198 24981 13996 5802 24510 4585 26585 25739

If happy with the result, pipe the output through a shell (append | sh ), or source it using "process substitution".

3

Yes, I want to kill all lpsched process older than 72h and excepting the spooler id (column 3 -11814).

I can try this option and I will let you know, but it doesn't filter by date (older than 72h).

4

You might want to go for the ( man ps )

etimes      ELAPSED   elapsed time since the process was started, in seconds.

format specifier (in seconds for ease of evaluation).

5

Thanks a lot for the info, but I don't know how to isolate PIDs older than 72h:

ps -aef |grep -i lpsched | grep -v grep | sort -rk6 
       lp 18188 11814  0 08:11:54 ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
      lp 12650 11814  0 08:56:28 ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
      lp  9131 11814  0 12:19:57 ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
      lp  1078 11814  0 09:08:07 ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
      lp 29793 11814  0  Sep 30  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
      lp 11814     1 23  Aug 28  ?        245:18 /usr/sbin/lpsched
      lp 19332 11814  0  Oct 19  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
      lp 18598 11814  0  Oct 17  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
      lp 26198 11814  0  Oct 16  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
      lp  5802 11814  0  Oct 12  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
      lp 24510 11814  0  Oct 10  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
      lp  4585 11814  0  Oct  8  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
      lp 26585 11814  0  Oct  7  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched
      lp 25739 11814  0  Oct  2  ?         0:00 /usr/sbin/lpsched

 ps -eaf | grep -e lpsched | grep -v grep | awk '{if (/lpsched$/ && $3 > 1) printf "%s ", $2}'
24510 19332 12650 4585 29793 26585 26198 25739 9131 18598 5802 18188
6

You cited my post, but did you read resp. understand it?

7

What RudiC was suggesting (and, if you would have undergone the effort to actually read the man page, as suggested, you'd have found that out yourself) was that ps has a -o -option which you can use to tailor its output to exactly what you need. You might want to consider using this instead of the -eaf you use right now.

Using this device you can use the keyword RudiC gave you to get the number of seconds since the process was started. "3 days" are then a matter of multiplying 86400 (the number of seconds in a day, 24x60x60) by 3 - an exercise left to the interested reader - and testing against this threshhold value.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

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