Question

Bi weekly - Cron Job

Asked by: aj_ranga

Hello,
        Can anybody help me out in setting the cron-job for every 2 weeks (on sunday), lets say I want run restart-server.sh script.

Can some one give exact format for this.  like 0,15,30,45 * * * *  /tmp/restart-server.sh


Thanks,
AJ

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Asked On
2009-09-15 at 15:42:51ID24734758
Tags

Linux

,

Unix

Topics

Linux Programming

,

Unix Systems Programming

,

Linux Setup

Participating Experts
3
Points
125
Comments
9

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Answers

 

by: svingalPosted on 2009-09-15 at 15:57:52ID: 25340442

i think this is not possible by cron.
schedule your script every week, and use this little script which makes it run the "action"-part only every other run:

On the first run the script will not find /some/file, so it will create it and exit. On the second run it will remove it and then proceed to do whatever it is supposed to do. On the next run it won't find the file (because it removed it) and therefore will only create it and then exit, ....

This script can be used weekly in cron but will do its intended purpose only every other week.

#! /bin/bash
 
if [ -e /some/file ] ; then
     rm -f /some/file
else
     touch /some/file
     exit 0
fi
 
... do here what your script is supposed to do ....
 
exit 0

                                              
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by: yuzhPosted on 2009-09-15 at 17:47:49ID: 25340909

You can write a wrapper script, to make it only run for every 2nd week, and put it in the crontab to run the script once a  week, please have a look at my example script in http:Q_20607871.html

 

by: woolmilkporcPosted on 2009-09-16 at 00:15:28ID: 25342747

00 04  * * 0  [ $(($(date +\%W)\%2)) -eq 1 ] && /tmp/restart-server.sh

This wil run restart-server.sh sundays every second (odd) week, at 4 A.M.

Mind the backslashes preceeding "%" - they're important!

wmp

 

 

by: aj_rangaPosted on 2009-09-16 at 06:37:05ID: 31629196

Implementation is pretty easy.Thanks for your help woolmilkporc.

 

by: woolmilkporcPosted on 2009-09-16 at 06:43:53ID: 25345484

Thx for the points, but - any reason for grade "B"?

 

by: aj_rangaPosted on 2009-09-16 at 14:18:51ID: 25350304

I was unable to understand  [ $(($(date +\%W)\%2)) -eq 1 ] && ( i am in the learning phase) Is it possiblefor you to explain me the above...

 

by: woolmilkporcPosted on 2009-09-16 at 15:37:37ID: 25351019

OK, no problem.

Let's go from inside out.

- but first the backslashes ( \ ) - they're needed to protect the "%" signs from being interpreted by cron. Please look at "man crontab" for an explanation.

"date +\%W" gives the week number starting with zero (37). "+" indicates the start of a so called field descriptor, "%W" being only one of many. Use "man date" to learn about the other ones.

The $( ... ) means, in simple words, "execute the command inside and replace the whole $(...) thing with the result"

So at the first stage the above reads [ $((37\%2)) -eq 1 ] &&

$(( ... )) indicates an arithmetic operation. "%" means "divide and return the remainder". Again, the whole $((...)) stuff is replaced by the result (37%2=1 -  "37 divided by two gives 18 remainder 1")

So, at stage two, we have [ 1 -eq 1 ] &&

"-eq" is a comparison operator and means "arithmetically equal"
"[ ... ] &&" is a short form for "if [ expression ] then ...". In other words: "if the comparison inside the brackets returns a "true" result, execute the next command"

So our stage three reads: "If one is equal to one then execute the command following "&&""

"1 -eq 1" is obviously "true".

Thus in our current week 38 (which is week 37 for the "date" command) "/tmp/restart-server.sh" would be executed, whereas next week (38%2 is 0, which is not equal to 1) it wouldn't.

I think you're familiar with the crontab syntax (the  00 04 * * 0 .... stuff)? If not, again please look at "man crontab", where it's well explained.

Hope I could help you a bit,

have fun!

wmp





 

by: aj_rangaPosted on 2009-09-16 at 17:46:32ID: 25351891

Thank you very much for explaining me in detail.

 

by: yuzhPosted on 2009-09-16 at 17:51:35ID: 25351927

Why not split the points, the example in my link gave you all the infor to solve the problem and understand the solution!

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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