I'm receiving some data through a socket in Python2.7 and treating it as I see fit. This data consists mainly of dates and timestamps, that should be then added to crontab as jobs using python-crontab.
Problem: crontab only goes as precise as minutes. I need at least seconds.
I found this frequent-cron that seems to do the trick, but since it's "under the MIT license" it's of no use to me. Is there another way to have seconds precision?
Just found out that if I add "14 15 * * * sleep 10s; python myScript.py" in crontab -e it will execute at 15:14:10. Crontab schedules the task to 15:14:00, but I delay the execution by 10 seconds, simulating the second precision I wanted. This might just do the trick, though I wish there was a more elegant way.
Related
Background
I'm struggling to find a example of WDT in the way I want to use it. Wondering if I misunderstanding its use.
my python writing is pure hobby, honestly Classes intimidate me.
in short my program reads a number of sensors connected to a raspberry pi and writes the data to a cloud hosted object database.
i have an intermittent error that while I try to figure out I want to implement a based watchdog timer.
This is what I'd like to implement so in the very least I continue to collect and store data.
I've read about the builtin watchdog timer the raspberry pi has built in here: https://diode.io/raspberry%20pi/running-forever-with-the-raspberry-pi-hardware-watchdog-20202/
The problem I want the raspberry pi to reboot if my program hangs, but when that happens the OS is still fine, so the solution in the link above is not effective.
What I'd like to implement:
set the builtin watchdog timer to reboot the raspberry pi after 200 seconds without restarting (patting?) the timer. I think the instructions for this are in the link above.
Within my python script, after I iterate through each sensor, restart (or pat?) the watchdog timer and if 200 seconds elapse between pattings (meaning my program hangs) then RPi reboots.
is this possible?
can someone help me with some simple code? I was hoping to keep this simple and avoid classes and/or threads...
thank you in advance
The WDT is probably not the right solution for the problem you are describing. Based on your description, it sounds like what you have is a program that is intended to run periodically (either on a fixed schedule or in response to some event), and that program currently has a bug that is causing it to hang intermittently and never complete it's task or terminate.
The first and best way to solve that, I'm sure you can guess, is to fix the bug. But your thinking is not unreasonable either, and doing what you describe is very common. There are many valid approaches that will do what you want without the complexity of trying to deal with a hardware timer. One of the easiest is probably to just wrap the program in a shell script and use the timeout command to limit how long it is allowed to execute before it is terminated.
Assuming the script is located at /home/user/my_script.py, and you want to run it every 10 minutes, allowing it 2 minutes before it is killed, this would work:
create a wrapper shell script:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
if ! timeout 120s python /home/user/my_script.py; then
msg="$(date) - script exceeded timeout and was killed"
else
msg="$(date) - script ran successfully"
fi
echo "${msg}" >> /home/user/my_script.log
put the script in a file, say at /home/user/wrapper_script.sh and run chmod 755 /home/user/wrapper_script.sh to make it executable.
schedule the script to run every 10 minutes using cron. At a shell, use crontab -e to edit the users crontab file and add a new line like this:
*/10 * * * * /home/user/wrapper_script.sh
now, every 10 minutes the wrapper will start automatically, and it will kick off the python script. It will wait 2 minutes for the script to stop normally, after which it will reach the timeout and terminate it.
Note: depending on how your python program is written, you might have to use some other options to the timeout command to specify which signal it should use to stop the program. If it is a very basic python script, it should be fine using the default.
Edit: based on the comments, you might be able to just change the command you're using to this:
xterm -T "HMS" -geometry 100x70+10+35 -hold -e sudo timeout 120s /usr/bin/python3 /home/pi/h$
Doing that won't actually schedule the script to run at any fixed interval, so it assumes you already have something in place to handle that. All this will do is make srue that the script is restricted to 120 seconds of run time before it is killed.
How can I write a code that will run a task for example "everyday (or every 24 hours)at 3:20 a.m."?
The main problem is "3:20" part, how do I make cron task at this exact time?
You simply specify the minute and hour that you want it to occur on, and use * for the other values. For example: 20 3 * * * will run at 3:20 AM every day forever.
You can experiment with cron-schedules using this website to get a better understanding for how the syntax works: https://crontab.guru/#20_3_*_*_*
More out of curiosity, I was wondering how might I make a python script sleep for 1 second without using the time module?
Is there a computation that can be conducted in a while loop which takes a machine of n processing power a designated and indexable amount of time?
As mentioned in comments for your second part of question:
The processing time is depends on the machine(computer and its configuration) you are working with and active processes on it. There isnt fixed amount of time for an operation.
It's been a long time since you could get a reliable delay out of just trying to execute code that would take a certain time to complete. Computers don't work like that any more.
But to answer your first question: you can use system calls and open a os process to sleep 1 second like:
import subprocess
subprocess.run(["sleep", "1"])
I am working on a Python program. It needs to run every 15 minutes. It currently waits 870 seconds (14.5 mins) before running again, but as the time it takes to complete the action varies, sometimes it runs before it has been 15 minutes since it last run, sometimes after 15 minutes.
My code for this part currently looks like this:
print(colour.BOLD, colour.PURPLE, "Finished", colour.END)
print(colour.BOLD, colour.BLUE, 'WAITING 15 MINUTES (900 SECONDS)', colour.END)
time.sleep(870)
Is there a way I can get it to run at xx:15, xx:30, xx:45, xx:00 where xx is every hour from 00 to 23?
Sorry if I'm being confusing here. Thanks for any help in advance.
I would use the schedule module: https://pypi.org/project/schedule/
you would run:
schedule.every().minute.at(":00").do(job)
schedule.every().minute.at(":15").do(job)
schedule.every().minute.at(":30").do(job)
schedule.every().minute.at(":45").do(job)
Use your OS tools to achieve similar results.
They are very reliable and, in case of your script failure, it will run anyway next time.
Linux
Use crontab.
How to set it will slightly change depending on your Distribution.
As a general idea:
sudo crontab -e
Inside the crontab write (be sure to customize the python executable and script path):
*/15 * * * * /usr/bin/python /path/to/your/script.py
This will make sure that your script is executed every 15 minutes.
Windows
How to schedule a task on Windows is more dependent on the Windows version you are using and it is a very visual task.
Googling "How to schedule a task in Windows" will return way better / more specific / updated results than the one I could clumsily explain here.
Here's a nice one I have found for you.
Mac
Read the amazing answer by Meki here on StackOverflow.
Having a script that does a thing at discrete intervals taking control of its own destiny like that makes me squirrely. I would use an external scheduling framework to run this job at discrete intervals. In Linux, this can be done with cronjobs; in Windows, it can be done with Task Scheduler.
Linux:
In terminal, type
crontab -e
to edit the cron schedule for the current user context. Docs on editing cron can be found all over the internet - here's one: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/linux/usage/cron.md
Windows:
You can schedule a python script to run on that schedule in Windows Task Scheduler. here's a link walking through that: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/product/analytics/scheduling-a-python-script-or-model-to-run-at-a-prescribed-time/
be certain to utilize the "if the task is already running" and "run task as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed" options if you do this method to control appropriate behavior:
So far, I've learned programming using languages that are interpreted (javascript.) So it's easy enough for me to draw shapes, and do cool things while the user is interacting.
But now I want to make a program that does things in the background of the users machine, and doesn't take up a lot of resources.
I'm familiar with python, so I've started making key functions, and I can run them from the terminal, but I'm lost on how I could tell the program to check for hard drives, say, every ten minutes.
Is there an OS feature that my program can get called upon every ten minutes?
Or should I do a while loop, and just wait for something to change?
The latter seems processesor-heavy, but I have no idea.
If you could just give me the keywords to Google, I could follow the rabbit hole, but this isn't something I've ever run across.
If you're on Unix, you can use cron. An example of a crontab entry that runs every ten minutes:
$ crontab -l
*/10 * * * * /home/username/script.py
Here's an intro to cron: http://www.unixgeeks.org/security/newbie/unix/cron-1.html.
On Windows, use Task Scheduler.
A very easy way to run something every 10 minutes is the following:
import time
while(True):
yourFunction(...)
time.sleep(600)
Time.sleep(600) will pause the execution of your program for 600 seconds