use cron to schedule a job only once

I wrote about not using DAY OF MONTH and DAY OF WEEK simultanously in how to cron

The correct method is to use
15 14 15 05 * /tmp/run-my-job

But… I wrote this five years ago. Hmmm ! Not that correct then since it would run every year 😉

Ok, periodically I check for jobs are scheduled to run a specific date only
$ crontab -l|awk '$1!~/#/&&$3*$4' 15 14 15 05 * /tmp/run-my-job

I have 9 more days to remove this before it runs for the fifth time 🙂

4 thoughts on “use cron to schedule a job only once”

Colin 't Hart May 6, 2013 at 13:48

Surely the “at” command would be more appropriate for scheduling a job to run just once in the future?
Laurent Schneider Post authorMay 6, 2013 at 14:14

Indeed Colin, but one sysadmin may prefer to authorized only one type of scheduler (cron).
Sudhir May 23, 2013 at 04:34

How about

15 14 15 05 * /tmp/run-my-job; mv /tmp/run-my-job /tmp/run-my-job-hold 2>/dev/null

it wont find it next time
/S/
Laurent Schneider Post authorMay 23, 2013 at 17:55

good idea, or maybe

55 17 23 05 * /bin/runyourscript ; crontab -l | grep -v DELETEME-001 | crontab

🙂

so it will autodelete

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