Stop / Kill a Python script using cron

Question

My goal is to run my python script each day (besides Friday and Saturday) at 10:00 and terminate it by 18:00.

I added the following to the crontab but the second command isn't working.

0 10 * * 0,1,2,3,4 /home/pi/MotionDetector.py
0 18 * * 0,1,2,3,4 /home/pi/MotionDetector.py killall -9 MotionDetector.py

Using Linux 2.7.9

I tried this solution that worked Via the terminal but not in cron (when I typed the command in the terminal it closed the script right away but when I put it on the crontab it didn't do anything)

Why are you passing killall as an argument to MotionDetector.py ? — Håken Lid
– Håken Lid, Commented Jul 21, 2018 at 21:39

Shiva · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-22 06:38:08Z

2

For killing the job:

0 18 * * 0,1,2,3,4 /usr/bin/pkill -f MotionDetector.py

pkill kills a process by name. While the default search criteria is to find the process by its full name, -f argument allows you to search by any of the parts in the process name.

Updated solution to account for the scenario raised by @håken-lid:

When the script is executed by cron or by the user, the process name would be in the format:
cron: /home/pi/venv/bin/python /home/pi/MotionDetector.py
user: python MotionDetectory.py

Using simple regex patterns we can kill the process started by,

cron or user:

0 18 * * 0,1,2,3,4 /usr/bin/pkill -f 'python.*MotionDetector.py'
only cron

0 18 * * 0,1,2,3,4 /usr/bin/pkill -f ^'/home/pi/venv/bin/python /home/pi/MotionDetector.py'

edited Jul 22, 2018 at 6:38

answered Jul 21, 2018 at 21:34

Shiva

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1 Comment

Håken Lid Over a year ago

Why use -f here? Wouldn't you risk killing for example vim MotionDetector.py?

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