Better Scheduler Than Cron?

Chanc_Gorkon asks: "I am looking for an open source job scheduler that is better than cron. I need a scheduler that has dependency checking, preemption (to stop jobs that access the same resources from running at the same time) and -full- logging. Cron e-mails are nice, but I usually end up cleaning them out with out reading. E-mailing the sysadmin -only- when a job does not get kicked off would be the preferable option. I have scoured Freshmeat and Sourceforge and have found nothing that comes close to what I am looking for. Do you guys have some options for me?"

launchd

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you looked at launchd, the new all-purpose task control daemon? Don't be put off by the fact that it's from Apple--it's open source, licensed under the APSL, which I believe is GPL-compatible, if you care about that kind of thing. It seems to offer many of the features you want, including task scheduling, preemption control, etc.

Here's the manpage [apple.com]; here's a tutorial [macgeekery.com] (geared towards OS X developers, unfortunately), and here's John Siracusa's overview of launchd from Ars Technica [arstechnica.com].

Re:launchd

[DanThe1Man]

Don't forget the slashdot article http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/01/ 1858238&tid=182&tid=179&tid=130&tid=3 [slashdot.org]

Write some scripts

[Jepler]

You identified some elements that could be written as simple unix scripts.

Serializing cron jobs that access some resource? Use "lockfile". Wrap it with something that claims the necessary locks in the right order, runs the real script, and then removes all the locks.

Only producing output in the case of an error? Write a script that saves output to a temporary file, and then cats the file if the exit value is not "success".

These should both be pretty basic tasks that can be done in shell, python, or perl. And you can take them with you t

Similiar question

[Asgard]

I asked a similar question here: Open Source Batch Management [slashdot.org]

Re:launchd

[kalidasa]

Somebody mod parent and grandparent up : both are informative. The ars technica article linked in the /. posting above (http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars /5 [arstechnica.com]) is a great introduction to what launchd is.

Options

[tpv]

• http://www.opensymphony.com/quartz/ [opensymphony.com]
• http://www.clusterresources.com/products/torque/ [clusterresources.com]
• http://www.OpenPBS.org/ [openpbs.org]
• http://saturn.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

Re:Cron

[Goo.cc]

And check out this beatiful crontab from the Gentoo forums:

What's In Your Crontab? [gentoo.org]