How to get a unix script to run every 15 seconds?

Question

I\'ve seen a few solutions, including watch and simply running a looping (and sleeping) script in the background, but nothing has been ideal.

I have a script that ne

Answer 1

To avoid possible overlapping of execution, use a locking mechanism as described in that thread.

Answer 2

#! /bin/sh

# Run all programs in a directory in parallel
# Usage: run-parallel directory delay
# Copyright 2013 by Marc Perkel
# docs at http://wiki.junkemailfilter.com/index.php/How_to_run_a_Linux_script_every_few_seconds_under_cron"
# Free to use with attribution

if [ $# -eq 0 ]
then
   echo
   echo "run-parallel by Marc Perkel"
   echo
   echo "This program is used to run all programs in a directory in parallel" 
   echo "or to rerun them every X seconds for one minute."
   echo "Think of this program as cron with seconds resolution."
   echo
   echo "Usage: run-parallel [directory] [delay]"
   echo
   echo "Examples:"
   echo "   run-parallel /etc/cron.20sec 20"
   echo "   run-parallel 20"
   echo "   # Runs all executable files in /etc/cron.20sec every 20 seconds or 3 times a minute."
   echo 
   echo "If delay parameter is missing it runs everything once and exits."
   echo "If only delay is passed then the directory /etc/cron.[delay]sec is assumed."
   echo
   echo 'if "cronsec" is passed then it runs all of these delays 2 3 4 5 6 10 12 15 20 30'
   echo "resulting in 30 20 15 12 10 6 5 4 3 2 executions per minute." 
   echo
   exit
fi

# If "cronsec" is passed as a parameter then run all the delays in parallel

if [ $1 = cronsec ]
then
   $0 2 &
   $0 3 &
   $0 4 &
   $0 5 &
   $0 6 &
   $0 10 &
   $0 12 &
   $0 15 &
   $0 20 &
   $0 30 &
   exit
fi

# Set the directory to first prameter and delay to second parameter

dir=$1
delay=$2

# If only parameter is 2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30 then automatically calculate 
# the standard directory name /etc/cron.[delay]sec

if [[ "$1" =~ ^(2|3|4|5|6|10|12|15|20|30)$ ]]
then
   dir="/etc/cron.$1sec"
   delay=$1
fi

# Exit if directory doesn't exist or has no files

if [ ! "$(ls -A $dir/)" ]
then
   exit
fi

# Sleep if both $delay and $counter are set

if [ ! -z $delay ] && [ ! -z $counter ]
then
   sleep $delay
fi

# Set counter to 0 if not set

if [ -z $counter ]
then
   counter=0
fi

# Run all the programs in the directory in parallel
# Use of timeout ensures that the processes are killed if they run too long

for program in $dir/* ; do
   if [ -x $program ] 
   then
      if [ "0$delay" -gt 1 ] 
      then
         timeout $delay $program &> /dev/null &
      else
         $program &> /dev/null &
      fi
   fi
done

# If delay not set then we're done

if [ -z $delay ]
then
   exit
fi

# Add delay to counter

counter=$(( $counter + $delay ))

# If minute is not up - call self recursively

if [ $counter -lt 60 ]
then
   . $0 $dir $delay &
fi

# Otherwise we're done

Answer 3

Use nanosleep(2). It uses structure timespec that is used to specify intervals of time with nanosecond precision.

struct timespec {
           time_t tv_sec;        /* seconds */
           long   tv_nsec;       /* nanoseconds */
       };