Programmatically schedule script execution with launchd or crontab - bash

I know how to create a configuration to schedule eg. a daily execution of a script with launchd or crontab on MacOS. However, I run into a scenario where I need to schedule the one-time execution of a script as part of a(nother) ruby script.
The hacky solution to that would be to manually write a plist file, and then running launchctl load, however that requires sudo privileges.
Is there a better way of programmatically scheduling the one-time execution of a script in MacOS?

I would use the at command. I haven't used it on mac os, but I would bet you can do brew install at then you can run the at command to schedule a job at a specific time.
echo script.sh | at tomorrow noon
https://linux.die.net/man/1/at

Related

How to start WSL cron jobs on boot?

I have some scripts that must be run under WSL, and must be run all the time. Currently, my Windows 11 randomly decides when it thinks it's convenient to reboot and install some updates. Is there a way to start WSL cron jobs automatically with Windows?
If this sounds like an XY Problem, I'd be more than happy to elaborate further.
I set up the cron job via crontab -e (and also sudo). I was expecting it to behave as it would on a regular Linux distro, but it doesn't do anything until I "sudo service cron start" and have at least one of the WSL windows open.

Could Git Bash run daemon process periodically?

I have this myscript.sh act as a performance monitor in Windows Server. To do so, I'm using Git Bash to run the script but the problem is the script just execute it once after I put the command to run it. Is there any command that I can use to run it in daemon or maybe let the script run periodically based on our time interval?

running shell script with windows task scheduler

I currenty have a simple shell script that I created for a linux machine to be run using cron, but now I want to be able to run the file using windows task scheduler. I have tried to get it to work using cron for cygwin, but even after running cron-config successfully and ensuring that the shell script can be executed successfully, for some reason the cron task simply wasn't executing. So I decided to give in and use the windows task scheduler. In order to do this, I looked at the following posts about the issue:
Cgywin .sh file run as Windows Task Scheduler
http://www.davidjnice.com/cygwin_scheduled_tasks.html
in my case, the entry in the "actions" tab of the new task looks like this:
program/script: c:\cygwin64\bin\bash.exe
arguments: -l -c "/cygdrive/c/users/paul/bitcoinbot/download_all_data.sh >> cygdrive/c/users/paul/bitcoinbot/logfile.log 2>&1"
start in: c:\cygwin64\bin
Notice that I redirected the output of the shell script to a log file, so that I should be able to see there whether the program run. Other than that, I simply edited the "trigger" tab to run the task daily, and set the time to a couple of minutes in the fture to see whether it ran successfully.
Alas, when I look at the detailed event history for the task, nothing changes when the trigger time passes. And when I manually "run" the task, the event history seems to add a few different events, but the task is completed within seconds, whereas this task should take over an hour (and it does when the shell script is executed directly from the terminal). And when I look for the log file that should have been created, there is nothing.
Does anyone have any idea what might be the issue here? How can I get my task to run properly at the trigger time, and how can I make sure it does so?
Best,
Paul
EDIT:
here are the pictures showing event history, as per Ken White's request.
Please ignore the fact that it says there are 24 events. These are from multiple separate runs of the task. The events shown here are a complete list of the events triggered by a single run.
EDIT 2:
Regarding my attempts to get cron to work, I have run into the following problem when I try to start the cron service using cygrunsrv. First of all, I tried to start cron by typing
cygrunsrv -I cron -p /usr/sbin/cron.exe -a -D
Now when I type
$cygrunsrv -Q cron
Service: cron
Current State: stopped
Command: /usr/bin/cron.exe
Now, I tried to start the cron service by typing
cygrunsrv -S cron
Cygrunsrv: Error starting a service: QueryServiceStatus: Win32 error 1062:
The service has not been started.
Does anyone hae any idea what this error means? I tried googling it, but couldn't find any answers.

Why does scheduling Spark jobs through cron fail (while the same command works when executed on terminal)?

I am trying to schedule a spark job using cron.
I have made a shell script and it executes well on the terminal.
However, when I execute the script using cron it gives me insufficient memory to start JVM thread error.
Every time I start the script using terminal there is no issue. This issue comes when the script starts with cron.
Kindly if you could suggest something.

Simple script run via cronjob doesn't work but works from shell

I am on shared hosting and I'm trying to schedule cronjob to run every now and then. Via cPanel I scheduled to execute my script but even though that according to my host support the cronjob runs, the script doesn't seem as doing anything. The cron job command I set via cPanel is:
/bin/sh /home1/myusername/public_html/somefolder/cronjob2.sh
and the cronjob2.sh
#!/bin/bash
/home1/myusername/public_html/somefolder/node_modules/forever/bin/forever stop 0
when via SSH I execute:
/home1/myusername/public_html/somefolder/cronjob2.sh
it stops forever process as needed. From cronjob doesn't do anything.
How can I get this working?
EDIT:
So I've tried:
/bin/sh /home1/username/public_html/somefolder/cronjob2.sh >> /tmp/mylog 2>&1
and mylog entries say:
/usr/bin/env: node: No such file or directory
It seems that forever needs to run node and this cannot be found. How would I possibly fix this?
EDIT2:
Accepted answer at superuser.com. Thank you all for help
https://superuser.com/questions/763261/simple-script-run-via-cronjob-doesnt-work-but-works-from-shell/763288#763288
For cron job lines in a crontab it's not required to specify kind of shell or e.g. of perl.
It's enough, that your script contains
shebang
line.
Therefore you should remove /bin/sh from your cron job line.
Another aspect, that might cause a different behavior of your script by interactive start and by cron daemon start is possible different environment, first of all the PATH variable. Therefore check, if you script is able to be executed in very restricted environment, that is provided by cron daemon. You can determine your cron job environment experimentally by start of temporary cron job, that executes "env" command and writes its output to a file.
Once more aspect: Have you redirected STDOUT and STDERR of the cron job to a log file and read its content to analyze the issue? You can do it as follows:
your_cron_job >/tmp/any_name.log 2>&1
According to what you wrote, when you run your script via SSH, you are using bash, because this line is the first of your script:
#!/bin/bash
However, in the crontab, you are forcing the use of sh instead of bash. Are you sure your script is fully compatible with sh? Otherwise, simply replace /bin/sh with /bin/bash in your cron command and test again.

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