Get all user processes via script run by cron job - php

Question

I have a corn job that executes a PHP script every minute and execute processchecker.php. The script processchecker.php will then check from user process, which one contains the filename backgroundprocess.php.
This works perfectly if iam triggering these files manually by visiting their respective URLs.
Problem comes in when i automate the process as a cron job which for some reason does not return the processes that i am looking for. Cron jobs seem to be running with no user account and i am suspecting i need a method of listing all processes especially those started by the cron job itself.
processcheck.php
<?php
exec("ps aux", $output, $result);
$found=0;
foreach ($output AS $line) if(strpos($line, "backgroundprocess.php")){ $found=$found+1;};
if($found==0){
//service not running start it all over again
if (!$pid = shell_exec("nohup php backgroundprocess.php > /dev/null 2>&1 & echo $!")) return false;
}else{
//service is Already running
}
?>
From what i am seeing exec("ps aux", $output, $result); is not fetching processes started by the cron job itself......and therefore my background process will always be started over and over.
Please note, all this is on a remote vps server and i am using cpanel.
EDIT
Result is 0
Output is
Array
(
[0] => USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
[1] => rycjptbb 1 0.0 0.0 6324 600 ? SN 14:51 0:00 jailshell (rycjptbb) [init] ell -c nohup php public_html/processchecker.php > /dev/null & echo $!
[2] => rycjptbb 3 1.0 0.0 248940 12308 ? SN 14:51 0:00 php public_html/processchecker.php
[3] => rycjptbb 4 0.0 0.0 110236 1112 ? RN 14:51 0:00 ps aux
)

Answer 1

From what I understand, you just want to check if there is not other same process currently running.
For example, if process1.php runs every 1 minute, and the runtime can take lets say 3 minutes, you dont want another process to run in the second minute.
If that is your case then you can check if there is another process with the same name exists with this:
function is_other_process_exists()
{
$my_name = 'xxx'; //your process name, e.g. process1.php
$ps = `ps gax`;
$psLines = explode("\n", $ps);
array_pop($psLines);
$myLines = array();
foreach ( $psLines as $psLine )
{
if (strstr($psLine, $my_name))
{
$myLines[] = $psLine;
}
}
if ( count($myLines) > 1 ) {
$myPid = posix_getpid();
echo "process is already running with process id {$myPid}";
exit;
}
}