Re: regulating the time a process can run with crontab?

["L. C. Robinson" <lcr@onewest.net>]

And you might find that the "at" command is better choice
for timing than "sleep" or cron.  For example:

mpg123 lecture.mp3 &
SOUNDPROC=$!

at now+2hours << End_of_here_document
# Or: 
# at 9:30pm << End_of_here_document
kill $SOUNDPROC
End_of_here_document

On Fri, 4 Jan 2002, James R. Van Zandt wrote:

> One way to limit the duration of a command is to run it in a
> subprocess (i.e. put the shell command in parentheses) and have the
> parent kill it.  Here's an example:
> 
>   #!/bin/bash
>   # try to send a string to the synthesizer via four different serial
>   #ports
>   for x in 0 1 2 3; do
>       (DTK_PORT=/dev/ttyS$x
>       echo "trying $DTK_PORT"
>       stty sane 9600 raw -echo crtscts <$DTK_PORT &&\
>       stty -echo                       <$DTK_PORT &&\
>       stty ixon ixoff                  <$DTK_PORT &&\
>       echo "this is /dev/t t y s $x" $'\r' >$DTK_PORT )&
>   # if one of the above commands hangs, kill the process
>       sleep 2; kill $! >/dev/null 2>&1
>   done

-- 
L. C. Robinson
reply to no_spam+munged_lcr@onewest.net.invalid

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