We also had this challenge in our company to prevent a php script in a cron job from overlapping each other.
We made this solution
<?php
// Initialize variables
$found = 0;
$file = basename(__FILE__);
$commands = array();
// Get running processes.
exec("ps w", $commands);
// If processes are found
if (count($commands) > 0) {
foreach ($commands as $command) {
if (strpos($command, $file) === false) {
// Do nothin'
}
else {
// Let's count how many times the file is found.
$found++;
}
}
}
// If the instance of the file is found more than once.
if ($found > 1) {
echo "Another process is running.\n";
die();
}
/**
*
* Regular process here...
*
*/
?>