Customise randomised cronjob interval

antivirtel · June 14, 2023, 4:35pm

Hi,

I love Pi-hole, thank you all for the hard work!

I've tried to get some help on Discord, but I didn't get a reply for a while: Discord

I'd like to customise the random time interval for certain jobs, let's say the weekly upgrade, I would like to define an interval, eg. day: 6-7 (Sat or Sun), hours: 4-8 (AM), minutes don't matter, so 0-59. That's why on upgrade/install, the Pi-hole installer would only choose from this interval. Same for all the 4 cronjobs, per job config would be the best. Eg. with a config file or so. Is this something you can implement?

Connected to this: Randomize time of cron's PiHole -g process for getting all files

Thank you!

rdwebdesign · June 14, 2023, 8:30pm

The link you posted was closed in 2017 after implementing the randomization:

github.com

pi-hole/pi-hole/blob/6a45c6a8e027e1ac30d4556a88f31684bc80ccf1/automated install/basic-install.sh#L1751-L1755


      
          # Randomize gravity update time
          sed -i "s/59 1 /$((1 + RANDOM % 58)) $((3 + RANDOM % 2))/" /etc/cron.d/pihole
          # Randomize update checker time
          sed -i "s/59 17/$((1 + RANDOM % 58)) $((12 + RANDOM % 8))/" /etc/cron.d/pihole
          printf "%b  %b %s\\n" "${OVER}" "${TICK}" "${str}"

The current code sets a random time between 3:00 and 5:00am for gravity and between 12:00pm and 8:00pm for Pi-hole updates.

jfb · June 14, 2023, 8:35pm

if you are referring to the update of gravity done once a week, Pi-hole already does this at a random time on Sunday between 0300 and 0500 your local time.

This is done by the following code in the installer:

github.com

pi-hole/pi-hole/blob/6a45c6a8e027e1ac30d4556a88f31684bc80ccf1/automated install/basic-install.sh#L1751


      
          }
          
          # Installs a cron file
          installCron() {
              # Install the cron job
              local str="Installing latest Cron script"
              printf "\\n  %b %s..." "${INFO}" "${str}"
              # Copy the cron file over from the local repo
              # File must not be world or group writeable and must be owned by root
              install -D -m 644 -T -o root -g root ${PI_HOLE_LOCAL_REPO}/advanced/Templates/pihole.cron /etc/cron.d/pihole
              # Randomize gravity update time
              sed -i "s/59 1 /$((1 + RANDOM % 58)) $((3 + RANDOM % 2))/" /etc/cron.d/pihole
              # Randomize update checker time
              sed -i "s/59 17/$((1 + RANDOM % 58)) $((12 + RANDOM % 8))/" /etc/cron.d/pihole
              printf "%b  %b %s\\n" "${OVER}" "${TICK}" "${str}"
          }
          
          # Gravity is a very important script as it aggregates all of the domains into a single HOSTS formatted list,
          # which is what Pi-hole needs to begin blocking ads
          runGravity() {
              # Run gravity in the current shell

What is the goal in changing the time for log rotation, as an example? Logs are typically rotated at a meaningful time (i.e. the end of a day), so you can be certain that a log contains only the data for that day.

system · December 11, 2023, 8:36pm

This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.