I'm trying to convert the time parameter of crontab(Linux) which is formatted like this(* * * * *) to the corresponding time parameter of schtasks(Windows) which is kind of complex then that of crontab.
I'm in the middle of writing an application for doing this and its kinda getting more and more complex since crontab have so many possibilities/permutations for providing the time parameter.
I was wondering if this is the right approach to write a program for converting the parameter, or there exist any better approach for achieving this?
And since parameters in crontab can be provided in many possible ways like (0 0 1,10,15 * *) would schedule the task for midnight on 1st ,10th & 15th of month. So, is it possible at all for schtasks to take parameters that can do the same kind of scheduling?
Have you checked these cron ports to Windows?
CRONw
z-cron
Related
I've altered one of the popular clock skins for Rainmeter to be exactly how I want it. However, the only issue is that the '1' in the clock for hours 10, 11, and 12 gets cut off by the edge of the skin with the current margins.
I know exactly which value needs to be altered at the given times, so all I need to figure out now is how to run a Lua script to change it when the clock hits them. Problem is, after much searching I don't have the slightest clue how. It definitely seems like something that should be easily possible.
You need to run your lua script as a cron job.
In order to achieve this I'd suggest you use this cron.lua module which has the functionality you want. One example of what you can do is the following:
local clock = cron.every(time, callback, ...).
--Creates a clock that will execute callback every time, periodically. Additional parameters are passed to the callback too.
The callback variable is the code you want to be executed at every interval.
I want to do a task every 5 mins. I want to control when i can start and when i can end.
One way is to use sleep in a while true loop, another way is to use cronjob. Which one is preferred performance-wise?
Thanks!
cron is almost always the best solution.
If you try to do it yourself with a simple script running in a while loop:
while true; do
task
sleep 300
done
you eventually find that nothing is happening because your task failed due to a transient error. Or the system rebooted. Or some such. Making your script robust enough to deal with all these eventualities is hard work, and unnecessary. That's what cron is for, after all.
Also, if the task takes some non-trivial amount of time, the above simple-minded while loop will slowly shift out of sync with the clock. That could be fixed:
while true; do
task
sleep $((300 - $(date +%s) % 300))
done
Again, it's hardly worth it since cron will do that for you, too. However, cron will not save you from starting the task before the previous invocation finished, if the previous invocation got stuck somehow. So it's not a completely free ride, but it still provides you with some additional robustness.
A simple approach to solving the stuck-task problem is to use the flock utility. For example, you could cron a script containing the following:
(
flock -n 8 || {
logger -p user.warning Task is taking too long
# You might want to kill the stuck task here. See pkill
exit 1
}
# Do the task here
) 8> /tmp/my_task.lck
Use a cron job. Cron is made for this type of use case. It frees you of having to to code the while loop yourself.
However, cron may be unsuitable if the run time of the script is unpredictable and exceeds the timer schedule.
Performance-wise It is hard to tell unless you share what the script does and how often it does it. But generally speaking, neither option should have a negative impact on performance.
When I start an Array Job on Sun Grid Engine, how can I get an information later how long all the jobs took? I.e. I want to know how long it took from the moment when I submitted the jub, until the moment when the last job finished. (I do NOT want to know how much CPU-time all the jobs taken together consumed.)
I submit like this:
qsub -e GE_errors/ -o GE_out/ SGE_execute
and my SGE-execute script looks like this:
#!/bin/sh
#$ -t 1-100
~/bin/intersectBed -c -s -a infile_$SGE_TASK_ID -b template.bed > outfile_$SGE_TASK_ID
Any help appreciated. Thank you.
Something simple might be to just look at the earliest and latest timestamps in your GE_errors and GE_out directories.
Alternatively, if you've set up SGE's sidekick ARCo accounting system, you can see all that information (and more) in the sge_job and sge_job_usage tables.
For example, given the job number returned to you by your qsub command, you can get its unique id and submission time like so:
select j.j_id, j.j_submission_time from sge_job j where j.j_job_number = ?
and you can find the maximum completion time of all of its subtasks like so:
select max(u.ju_end_time) from sge_job_usage u where u.ju_parent = <j_id from up above>
and then subtract.
Note that the documentation on the above "Sun" Wiki is not perfect. (Which is why I came to stackoverflow today in the first place. :)
This is my problem, I've got a batch-script that I can't modify (lets call it foo) and I would like to count how many times/day this script is executed - to keep track of that data.
Preferably, I would like to write the number of executions with date and exit-code to some kind of log file.
So my question is if this is possible and in that case - how? To create a batch-script/something that works in the background and writes every execution of foo to a log.
(I know this would be easy if I could modify foo but I can't. Also, everything is running on WinXP machines.)
You could write a wrapper script that does the logging and calls the existing script. Then use the wrapper in place of the original script
Consider writing a program that interrogates the Task Manager.
See http://www.netomatix.com/ProcDiagnostics.aspx
You could, for example, write a simple Console app which runs on a timer; every 5 seconds it checks that your foo application process exists. If it finds that it does, it assumes that find as the start time of the application; if it doesn't find it, it assumes the application has now closed and logs that information. It wouldn't be accurate to the second by any means, but would give you a rough approximation of when the thing is running and closing.
You might be able to configure Process Monitor
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx to capture the information you require
I came past a few ways to cause a time delay such as pings and dirs. Though none of them are really precise, is there anny proper way to cause a time delay?
I heard about a few things though they don't work on all computers, not on my Windows XP nor the Windows NT at college.
It takes ages going through all files on Google finding a good answer, and since I didn't yet find the question on Stack Overflow I thought it might be good to just create the question myself ;)
Sleep
It will allow you to do this.
<warning>This is a hack</warning>
Use your favorite programming language (other than MS-DOS batch) and create an application which takes one argument, the number of milliseconds to wait, then, simply call this program from a batch file to sleep the required amount.
As far as I know, this is the only reliable way to do it in DOS.
If you don't have the ability to send another program along with the batch file, use DEBUG to write a sleep command on the fly, and execute it.
EDIT:
The above answer was kind of toungue-in-cheek. I wouldn't run a batch file that had some DEBUG trickery in it. I believe the traditional way to use a delay in a batch file is the CHOICE commad.
type nul|choice /c:y /t:y,nn > nul
Which of course, doesn't work in XP, since that would be WAAYY too convenient.
"...proper way...."
you can't do that in DOS.
It is possible to achieve a precision of a few miliseconds, depending on your machine's speed.
I have just finished creating such a batch, and though I won't share with you the actual code, I'll give you some pointers:
Use %time% variable, and devide into substrings (without ":" and ".") - one substring will get the seconds, the other - minutes (you may add hours, for delays of over an hour, and even incorporate the date)
Use set /A to transform the time variables into 1 integer representing the amount of seconds which have passed since a rounded hour (X:00:00.00). Add the inputed delay (in seconds) to that.
Create a short loop, comparing the value of the combined var (explained in section 2) to the current time (need to recalc the curent combined min+sec value, inside this loop), and exiting the loop when the match is true.
One major bugfix here - you'll need to truncate any preceeding zeros to variables which are about to get evaluated in a "set /A" command. I've noticed that the console's evaluator (for this command) returns an error when an integer with a preceeding 08 or 09 (or simply 08 or 09) is used.
Remark:
This will only work with command extensions enabled. To test it, use the following at the beginning of the routine:
verify other 2>nul
setlocal enableextensions
if errorlevel 1 goto err
And then add an error handler subroutine named "err".
If you'd want to continue your batch in the same file, use "endlocal" after the looping subroutine.
BTW, this applies ONLY to Windows XP service pack 2 or 3.