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bashsleepbackground-processcp

Copy every n seconds

I have a sleep and copy function to retrieve daily output of simulations running on a cluster node. It basically looks like this:

sleep_and_copy() {
while true; do
sleep 85600s
copy_data
done
}

where copy_data will perform the copy. The problem is that copy_data takes a lot of time to execute. In other words my copy happens only every 85600s + time to do the copy.

Is there a way to perform the copy exactly every n seconds?

Solution

  • To run your copy script every 24h (=86400s), use a cron job! This also ensures that the task runs after a reboot.

    If you really want to use a script and run it every 85600s, you can simply do the following:

    while true; do
  sleep 85600s
  copy_data &
done

    The & starts whatever copy_data does in a background process and returns immediately.