title: Ensure a single instance of an application in Linux
body: <p>I'm working on a GUI application in WxPython, and I am not sure how I can ensure that only one copy of my application is running at any given time on the machine. Due to the nature of the application, running more than once doesn't make any sense, and will fail quickly. Under Win32, I can simply make a named mutex and check that at startup. Unfortunately, I don't know of any facilities in Linux that can do this. </p>
  
  <p>I'm looking for something that will automatically be released should the application crash unexpectedly. I don't want to have to burden my users with having to manually delete lock files because I crashed.</p>