Schedule script execution after fixed time?

Question

I have a Python script that can run anywhere from 10 seconds to 5 minutes.

I need a scheduler that can spawn the job, then after the job is finished, wait 15 minutes, then run the job again etc.

No concurrency, just one instance of the job.
After the job is finished (not started!) there must be a wait period of 15 minutes.
Linux machine.

I haven't found in the documentation how to batch the job AFTER the current running job is finished, i.e. not in fixed intervals. Any pointers? — Don Joe
– Don Joe, Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 2:38
That's an odd requirement to have and something I don't know how to do in cron. The answer below with the little bash script would work fine or the equivalent logic in your python code. That's actually a pretty common approach for apps that do any polling. Another approach would be for your python script to reschedule itself as it finishes for 15 minutes later using the unix at command and the time module to calculate an offset. — gfortune
– gfortune, Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 3:22

Correa · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-01 02:31:13Z

3

You could use a bash script to do that. Invoke the program then after it finishes sleep for 15 minutes.

while true; do
    python myprogram.py
    sleep 900
done

answered Mar 1, 2012 at 2:25

Correa

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