fischer+o...@lavielle.com (Mike Fischer), 2025.05.16 (Fri) 17:53 (CEST): > > Am 16.05.2025 um 17:33 schrieb Jan Stary <h...@stare.cz>: > >>> How exactly are you using RANDOM in a crontab, > >> * * * * * time $((RANDOM % 60));/home/username/bin/script.sh > > That doesn't make any sense: do you mean sleep(1) instead of time(1)? > Sorry, yes. sleep is correct. > > Show the actual lines from the actual crontab -l > >> The (intended) semantics are slightly different from > >> ~ * * * * /home/username/bin/script.sh > >> The latter calculates the random value once when the crontab is loaded, > >> while the former calculates it each time the crontab entry is triggered. > > Why do you need that? > a) To get more randomness. > b) To get seconds resolution instead of minutes.
I found an old crontab(5) entry from the dark ages when we did not have "~": #5 * * * * sleep $((RANDOM \% 2048)) && /usr/libexec/spamd-setup Here you see what guenther@ already told you: "%" is special in crontab(5)s. Marcus
