Question

I want to create cron job that runs a script every 5 seconds. Seeing that cron jobs only allows increments of minutes 0-59 and so on.

I thought to create another script that calls my original script written below.

#!/bin/bash

while true
do
# script in the same directory as this script. is this correct?
bash makemehappy.sh
sleep 1
done

I now, need to know how to run this script every time i boot my computer and for it to start itself if it isn’t running for some reason.

I am also aware that running this script every minute wouldn’t be a good thing. 🙂

if there is an easier way to run a script every 5 seconds please advise.

Please and thank you.

Answer 1

I wouldn’t use cron for this. I would use that bash script (use an absolute path, unless you want it to be portable and know that the directory structure will be preserved).

Instead, I would just sleep 5, just like you did (only 5 seconds instead of 1).

As far as starting it with your system, that depends on the system. On (some) Linux distros, there’s a file called /etc/rc.local in which you can add scripts to run when the system starts. Well… I shouldn’t be so general, the distros that I have used have this. If you’re running Ubuntu, there is no longer an inittab, they use upstart, btw.

So if you have an endless loop and an entry in /etc/rc.local, then you should be golden for it to run endlessly (or until it encounters a problem and exits).