Linux – Using monit for a process that doesn’t background/run as a daemon

As of GNU coreutils 7.5 released in August 2009, sort allows a -h parameter, which allows numeric suffixes of the kind produced by du -h:

du -hs * | sort -h

If you are using a sort that does not support -h, you can install GNU Coreutils. E.g. on an older Mac OS X:

brew install coreutils
du -hs * | gsort -h

From sort manual:

-h, --human-numeric-sort compare human readable numbers (e.g., 2K 1G)

In monit, you can use a matching string for processes that do not have a PID. Using the example of a process named "myprocessname",

check process myprocessname
        matching "myprocessname"
        start program = "/etc/init.d/myproccessname start"
        stop program = "/usr/bin/killall myprocessname"
        if cpu usage > 95% for 10 cycles then restart

Maybe if you check to see if CPU load is at a certain level for 10 monitoring cycles (of 30-seconds each), then restart or kill, that could be an option. Or you could use monit's timestamp testing on a file related to the process.