On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 12:55:00PM +0000, Stephen Gran wrote: > This one time, at band camp, Don Armstrong said: > > On Thu, 15 Dec 2005, Florian Weimer wrote: > > > I'd like to create a cron entry which is run once a day, at some > > > random time. This is necessary because the cron entry will result > > > in a request over the network, and I want to avoid that all hosts in > > > a time zone pound the server at the same time. > > > > Why not just something like: > > > > 0 0 * * * at now + $(( $RANDOM \% 1440 )) minutes [...] > > Because that's a bashism, and some dash user will get upset with you. > > Probably the most portable way to handle it is to run the job from > cron.daily, but call a wrapper script that sleeps for a random amount of > time less than one day before runnign the actual job. For extra > goodness, use a lock file so that if the last random sleep was 23 hours > and 59 minutes, and the next one is 1 minute, you don't two jobs at > once. But that means essentially running a daemon for the package, completely undermining the point of cron.
-- Clear skies, Justin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]