Running a program for a specific period of time

CaptainHowdy · 08-22-2004, 05:32 PM

Hello everybody!

i want to run a program for a specific period of time. Specifically,
i want to run overnet from 23.00 at night to 6.00 am in the
morning. I ve seen the crontab command but i didnt find
any switch to specify to tha command the amount of period
of time to run.

Anyone has any ideas?

thanx

Proud · 08-22-2004, 05:35 PM

Either the program itself needs to be able to check the time, or you need to issue a start and a stop command, which could just be a kill pid via a second cron job.

shengchieh · 08-22-2004, 08:02 PM

Maybe others can help. But here's an idea.
Btw, figure out the options to use. I'm only
giving an idea.

Create an infinite do loop script:

Loop:
iflag = 0
date -option??? | grep -option??? > $TODAYTIME
if $TODAYTIME > 3pm & iflag = 0 then (you choose the time)
<run program>
iflag = 1
endif
if $TODAYTIME = 12am then
iflag = 0
endif
end of loop

So $TODAYTIME has the time. iflag = 1 if program is ran for
that day, otherwise zero.

Sheng-Chieh