Limit on Number of Cron Jobs Running on one Account

UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users
1

Hello, I have some 150 Cron Jobs running under my UNIX account. I want to add some more jobs. Is there a limit to the number of cron jobs that can be run on an account?

Thank you.

Pramodini

2

That would really depend on your system and its settings, of which you've mentioned nothing, but probably not.

Some daemons may wait for old jobs to finish before launching new ones, however.

1 Like
3

Not all of them run simultaneously. They are pretty much dependent upon each other. I guess I should wait until all established production jobs are finished before launching new ones.

Thanks for your reply.

Pramodini

4

If they're dependent upon each other, why not do it in one script where things (or groups of things) run in order, instead of scattered across tons of cron jobs whose timing is arbitrary and crucial?

5

no

1 Like
6

I am not comfortable running in one script because in case the job fails, having separate logs for each of my jobs makes it easier to debug and pinpoint the issue. This saves a lot of time and frustration especially when/if production job fails and need the immediate attention before any of the customers are adversely affected.

Thank you very much for your insight. It is appreciated.

Pramodini

7

Isn't the limit on number of cron jobs related to maxuprc (maximum number of process per user?) which is a parameter on solaris. I think HPUX has a similar setting in queuedefs file.

So I think there is a limit on the number of jobs/processes a user can run. You may want to check on those parameters.

8

There is a limit on the number of jobs that can run at one time. Example: Solaris has queudefs, which sets the maximum number of simultaneous at and cron jobs.

Frank is right. You can create as many different cron jobs as you like.

Corona is also more than correct. Maintaining 50 cron jobs in separate scripts is a guarantee that you will mess up somewhere. And not catch it for a long time.

It actually sounds like you need a job control app, rather than cron. By job control I mean an application that submits each job depending on time/date/day of week, previous jobs status, and specified parameters, etc. Not cron.

If you don't get what I mean have a look at openjcs
OpenJCS (Job Control System) | Download OpenJCS (Job Control System) software for free at SourceForge.net

9

Not really, it's not cron that's limiting you...

---------- Post updated at 12:09 PM ---------- Previous update was at 12:04 PM ----------

So save separate logs. You don't need cron to do that.

exec 1>/path/to/job1log
exec 2>/path/to/job1err

do_stuff

exec 1>/path/to/job2log
exec 2>/path/to/job2err

do_stuff

...