Since sudoserver.py is your script, you could modify it to create a file in an accessible location when it starts and to delete the file when it finishes. Your shell script can then check for the existence of that file to find out if sudoserver.py is running.
(EDIT)
Thanks to the commenters who suggested that while the presence or absence of the file is an unreliable indicator, a file's lock status is not.
I wrote the following Python script testlock.py:
f = open ("lockfile.lck","w")
for i in range(10000000):
print (i)
f.close()
... and ran it in a Cygwin console window on my Windows PC. At the same time, I had another Cygwin console window open in the same directory.
First, after I started testlock.py:
Simon@Simon-PC ~/test/python
$ ls
lockfile.lck testlock.py
Simon@Simon-PC ~/test/python
$ rm lockfile.lck
rm: cannot remove `lockfile.lck': Device or resource busy
... then after I had shut down testlock.py by using Ctrl-C:
Simon@Simon-PC ~/test/python
$ rm lockfile.lck
Simon@Simon-PC ~/test/python
$ ls
testlock.py
Simon@Simon-PC ~/test/python
$
Thus, it appears that Windows is locking the file while the testlock.py script is running but it is unlocked when it is stopped with Ctrl-C. The equivalent test can be carried out in Python with the following script:
import os
try:
os.remove ("lockfile.lck")
except:
print ("lockfile.lck in use")
... which correctly reports:
$ python testaccess.py
lockfile.lck in use
... when testlock.py is running but successfully removes the locked file when testlock.py has been stopped with a Ctrl-C.
Note that this approach works in Windows but it won't work in Unix because, according to the Python documentation:
On Windows, attempting to remove a file that is in use causes
an exception to be raised; on Unix, the directory entry is removed
but the storage allocated to the file is not made available until
the original file is no longer in use.
A platform-independent solution using an additional Python module FileLock is described in Locking a file in Python.
(FURTHER EDIT)
It appears that the OP didn't necessarily want a solution in Python. An alternative would be to do this in bash. Here is testlock.sh:
#!/bin/bash
flock lockfile.lck sequence.sh
The script sequence.sh just runs a time-consuming operation:
#!/bin/bash
for i in `seq 1 1000000`;
do
echo $i
done
Now, while testlock.sh is running, we can test the lock status using another variant on flock:
$ flock -n lockfile.lck echo "Lock acquired" || echo "Could not acquire lock"
Could not acquire lock
$ flock -n lockfile.lck echo "Lock acquired" || echo "Could not acquire lock"
Could not acquire lock
$ flock -n lockfile.lck echo "Lock acquired" || echo "Could not acquire lock"
Lock acquired
$
The first two attempts to lock the file failed because testlock.sh was still running and so the file was locked. The last attempt succeeded because testlock.sh had finished running.
