Running a cron every 30 seconds

Question

Ok so I have a cron that I need to run every 30 seconds.

Here is what I have:

*/30 * * * * /bin/bash -l -c \'cd /srv/last_song/releases/2012030813315         


        

Answer 1

Crontab job can be used to schedule a job in minutes/hours/days, but not in seconds. The alternative :

Create a script to execute every 30 seconds:

#!/bin/bash
# 30sec.sh

for COUNT in `seq 29` ; do
  cp /application/tmp/* /home/test
  sleep 30
done

Use crontab -e and a crontab to execute this script:

* * * * * /home/test/30sec.sh > /dev/null

Answer 2

I just had a similar task to do and use the following approach :

nohup watch -n30 "kill -3 NODE_PID" &

I needed to have a periodic kill -3 (to get the stack trace of a program) every 30 seconds for several hours.

nohup ... & 

This is here to be sure that I don't lose the execution of watch if I loose the shell (network issue, windows crash etc...)

Answer 3

Cron's granularity is in minutes and was not designed to wake up every x seconds to run something. Run your repeating task within a loop and it should do what you need:

#!/bin/env bash
while [ true ]; do
 sleep 30
 # do what you need to here
done

Answer 4

Use watch:

$ watch --interval .30 script_to_run_every_30_sec.sh

Answer 5

You can run that script as a service, restart every 30 seconds

Register a service

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/YOUR_SERVICE_NAME.service

Paste in the command below

Description=GIVE_YOUR_SERVICE_A_DESCRIPTION

Wants=network.target
After=syslog.target network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=YOUR_COMMAND_HERE
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
KillMode=process

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Reload services

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Enable the service

sudo systemctl enable YOUR_SERVICE_NAME

Start the service

sudo systemctl start YOUR_SERVICE_NAME

Check the status of your service

systemctl status YOUR_SERVICE_NAME

Answer 6

Why not just adding 2 consecutive command entries, both starting at different second?

0 * * * * /bin/bash -l -c 'cd /srv/last_song/releases/20120308133159 && script/rails runner -e production '\''Song.insert_latest'\'''
30 * * * * /bin/bash -l -c 'cd /srv/last_song/releases/20120308133159 && script/rails runner -e production '\''Song.insert_latest'\'''