Cron - Any advanced options?

[Dave Ihnat]

On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 01:45:57PM +0530, Kurian Thayil wrote:
> I am using RHEL 5.2 Server and I have 3 cron jobs enabled ...
> ... Now, all of these scripts are run once in every 7 minutes all day.
> The problem occurs when the scripts doesn't finish to execute in 7
> minutes. ...
> 
> Is there an option in CRON, which always check if CRON has started the
> process and is already running? Cron should execute the script only if the
> the process isn't running already. Any hints on this?

No, primarily because there are so many options available to provide
process control.  It can be as simple as a lockfile, or as sophisticated
as a semaphore or a named pipe.  (The latter would allow stacking
execution requests for the script, for instance.)

Cheers,
--
	Dave Ihnat
	ignatz at dminet.com