schedule-task.md

Configure a schedule task to run Spear

Mount a network attached drive or an external drive

Skip this step if you don't want to connect an external or a network drive.

sudo apt install cifs-utils

sudo mkdir /mnt/my_share

sudo nano /etc/fstab
# paste below in the file
//192.168.[num].[num]/my_share  /mnt/my_share  cifs  auto,username=\*\*\*,password=\*\*\*",nofail,x-systemd.automount 0       0

Configure a schedule job

Create a shell script

Create a new shell script run.sh or whatever name you like. When it runs on a schedule, it configures log files output, runs spear and clean up old logs files at the end of a run.

#!/bin/bash
cd /home/{user name}/spear
file_name=$(date +'%Y_%m_%d')
RUST_LOG=spear=info ./spear &>> log/log_$file_name
find /home/{user name}/spear/log -mindepth 1 -mtime +1 -type f -delete

Create a trigger

In order to run only one instance of run.sh at a time for backup that may run longer than next scheduled run, you can use a trigger script that checks if the previous run.sh job is completed. You can find more information about this approach at SimpleIt.Rocks blog.

caller.sh

#!/bin/bash
if pidof -o %PPID -x "run.sh">/dev/null; then
echo "Process is already running"
exit 1
else
/home/{user}/spear/run.sh
fi

Configure a cron job

Schedule using cron job:

crontab -e

Add the following line to the cron editor to schedule caller.sh every 12 hours:

0 */12 * * * /home/{user}/spear/caller.sh 2>&1 | logger -t spear

View the logs of the job:

grep spear /var/log/syslog
grep CRON /var/log/syslog

View spear logs:

tail /home/spear/log/log_file_name