Re: scripts running all the time?

[Raj Kiran Grandhi <grajkiran@gmail.com>]

Daniel Dalton wrote:

> My /home/daniel/bash-scripts/hpodder just contains the line
> echo "hello world"

cron runs stuff without a tty and simply mails the output to the user. 
If you don't have local delivery setup properly, you won't get the mail. 
Instead of just "echo hello world", put "echo hello world > /tmp/file"

For stopping, the method suggested by Doug works well, or you can try 
the timeout command (see the other posts in this thread)

My crontab has a simple entry

* * * * * /home/rajkiran/cron/cron.minute

The cron.minute script in turn executes all scripts in my ~/cron 
directory that end in the current time. I start my downloads at 2AM and 
stop them at 8AM (that time period corresponds to unlimited usage for my 
ISP). So I have two files dlstart.0200 and dlstop.0800 that start and 
stop downloads respectively.

Here is my cron.minute, modify to your needs:
=====
#!/bin/bash
CRON_DIR=~/cron

suffix=`date +%H%M`
cd $CRON_DIR
for job in *.$suffix
do
	if [ -x $job ]
	then ./$job
	elif [ -r $job ]
	then /bin/bash $job
	fi
done
=====

--
Raj Kiran Grandhi
--
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer, you will 
find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on the 
computer.