cron question / process queue

[Brian Chabot]

Kent Johnson wrote:

> I made a combined job that basically does this:
> if it is the first of the month:
>    run monthly job and wait for completion
> if it is Saturday:
>    run the weekly job and wait for completion
> run the daily job
> 
> The combined job is scheduled for 8pm execution with cron. Seems to work 
> so far...

I'd use a short wrapper in your scripting language of choice for the
cron job:

while lockfile exists, wait some amount of time and check again...
write a lockfile.
do the actual job/command
remove the lockfile.

This will work if the script takes less than two cycles to complete, but
may run out of order if it takes longer.

HTH,

Brian