UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

Hi,

We are running pre and post processing scripts (master server initiated) for backups (Veritas Netbackup Datacentre) - So our policies and schedules are kicked off via cron - however, we have so many servers, policies and schedules that managing these in cron/crontab is a nitemate.

Are there any GUI/Calender based schedulers out there that can either front end to cron or replace cron entirely ? Not looking for an enterprise schedule - just something that can do things like :

* Every 4th Sunday - run this
or
* Every 4th sunday don't run this

* Runs jobs on last day of the month, every month regardless of where it is 28th, 30th or 31st.

* Run job every Friday except of the friday is the last friday of the month.

And can managed 500+ seperate scheduled jobs.

Thanks in advance.

Don't know has GUI interface or not. But it is not difficult to work by command line.

you have a file according to your requirement:

#my english is not good. Just think that every 4 sunday is equal to every sunday, right? Then,

cat yourcron_file
0 * * * 0 scriptfile_name or any command you like
#do something on Sunday( last "0" ) at every hour (0 * )

30 8 * * 0,1,2,3,5,6 scriptfile_name or any command you like
#do something except on Thursday ( 4 is missed in 0,1,2,3,5,6 ) at 8:30am


Then you can write a script to ftp or rcp this file to all servers. Then run it by command "crontab yourcron_file" in local or run it by command "rsh target_host_name crontab yourcron_file" from remote. Sure you have already enabled rsh before.

If all succeed, you should able to view the schedule by "crontab -l".

Hope this help.

Go to http://freshmeat.net/ and do a search for cron - there are multiple replacements, central cron servers and GUI interfaces to cron available. There are many commercial schedulers that allow for cross-platform support as well; BMC's Control-M would be a good example.

Cheers,

Keith

Here is one solution.