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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting rm files in a directory, looping, counting, then exit Post 24794 by peter.herlihy on Wednesday 17th of July 2002 06:36:57 PM
Old 07-17-2002
Well hating to suggest a hack method...I will....

You could write a script that continually runs and performs the basic function of a crontab..... i.e.

#!/usr/bin/ksh

while(1)
do
rm /path/RAF.* 2> /dev/null
sleep 600
done

This would run every 600 seconds and remove any files matching the criteria. The Std Error would be thrown away incase there are no files to delete.

You'd need to start this fiel with nohup...so that it ran in the background and wasn't reliant on having a session open. i.e.

nohup script_name &

The issues with this approach are that if you want to stop the process then you'll need to find the PID and kill it. Yuo can do this with:

ps -ef | grep script_name then look for the PID column typically second column. Then

kill 12345 (where 12345 is the process id PID).

The other issue is if the server is shut down - then the script will stop running.

This is NOT the best way and has a number of shortcomings, but if you can't get crontab then maybe it's all you have.

You should enquire about having your own crontab..... in Sun (don't know about HP) it is possible to get crontabs for different users - so you don't have to be root! This would be MUCH more preferable than using this method.
 

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CRONTAB(1)						    BSD General Commands Manual 						CRONTAB(1)

NAME
crontab -- maintain crontab files for individual users (V3) SYNOPSIS
crontab [-u user] file crontab [-u user] { -l | -r | -e } DESCRIPTION
The crontab utility is the program used to install, deinstall or list the tables used to drive the cron(8) daemon in Vixie Cron. Each user can have their own crontab, and they are not intended to be edited directly. (Darwin note: Although cron(8) and crontab(5) are officially supported under Darwin, their functionality has been absorbed into launchd(8), which provides a more flexible way of automatically executing commands. See launchctl(1) for more information.) If the /usr/lib/cron/cron.allow file exists, then you must be listed therein in order to be allowed to use this command. If the /usr/lib/cron/cron.allow file does not exist but the /usr/lib/cron/cron.deny file does exist, then you must not be listed in the /usr/lib/cron/cron.deny file in order to use this command. If neither of these files exists, then depending on site-dependent configuration parameters, only the super user will be allowed to use this command, or all users will be able to use this command. The format of these files is one username per line, with no leading or trailing whitespace. Lines of other formats will be ignored, and so can be used for com- ments. The first form of this command is used to install a new crontab from some named file or standard input if the pseudo-filename '-' is given. The following options are available: -u Specify the name of the user whose crontab is to be tweaked. If this option is not given, crontab examines ``your'' crontab, i.e., the crontab of the person executing the command. Note that su(1) can confuse crontab and that if you are running inside of su(1) you should always use the -u option for safety's sake. -l Display the current crontab on standard output. -r Remove the current crontab. -e Edit the current crontab using the editor specified by the VISUAL or EDITOR environment variables. The specified editor must edit the file in place; any editor that unlinks the file and recreates it cannot be used. After you exit from the editor, the modified crontab will be installed automatically. FILES
/usr/lib/cron/cron.allow /usr/lib/cron/cron.deny DIAGNOSTICS
A fairly informative usage message appears if you run it with a bad command line. SEE ALSO
crontab(5), compat(5), cron(8), launchctl(1) STANDARDS
The crontab command conforms to IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2''). The new command syntax differs from previous versions of Vixie Cron, as well as from the classic SVR3 syntax. AUTHORS
Paul Vixie <paul@vix.com> BSD
December 29, 1993 BSD
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