[RndTbl] Potentially long cron jobs

[Gilbert E. Detillieux]

On 2010-04-01 13:06, Kevin McGregor wrote:
> I want to run something via cron which will take anywhere from less than 
> a minute to a day or so (possibly). Most of the time it will be well 
> under an hour, and I'd like it to run hourly, except if it's still 
> running, in which case nothing more need be done.
> 
> What the best way to do that?

This came up on the CentOS-mirror list back in February.  Proposed 
solutions included...

http://djlab.com/2009/10/lockfiles-in-bash/ [similar to Sean's solution]
http://code.google.com/p/withlock/ [requires Python 2.4]
flock(1) [may not be available other than on Linux?]

Hope this helps.

-- 
Gilbert E. Detillieux		E-mail:	<gedetil at cs.umanitoba.ca>
Dept. of Computer Science	Web:	http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/
University of Manitoba		Phone:	(204)474-8161
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