cron facility for openvms

[himabindu s]

Hi,

Is there any cron facility available for OpenVMS similar to Unix?
I have a command procedure and that should be executed every 2 days, so if we have a cron facility, how can we add that command procedure to the cron job?

Thanks,
Hima Bindu S

[Steven Schweda]

A Forum search for keywords like, say,
batch resubmit
should find examples showing how to do things
like this without a "cron".

A Forum search for "cron" should find some
things, too.

It's pretty common to have a job which runs
every day, and decides whether it's the right
day to do some particular task (particular
day of the week or month, date, day after a
day when the task wasn't done, ...).

[Karl Rohwedder]

If you want to do it the unix way, here is a cron facility e.g.:

http://www.the-rohwedders.de/downloads/index.html

The crontab entry would be something like:

# min hour day month weekday job
00 09 * * 1,3,5 MYJOB/QUEUE=MYQUEUE/LOG=MYLOG

starts the MYJOB.COM at 09:00 on monday, wednesday and friday.

regards Kalle

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] every 2 days [...]

> [...] on monday, wednesday and friday.

Not really the same thing, is it?

[himabindu s]

Thanks for ur replies...
My question is do we have any cron tab facility by default in OpenVMS similar to that we have in Unix?

[Volker Halle]

Hima,

the answer is no. There is no cron utility in OpenVMS. There is a queue manager subsystem, which provides some of the functionalities of cron, but not all of them.

Volker.

[John Gillings]

Hima,

> do we have any cron tab facility by
> default in OpenVMS

OpenVMS is not Unix. Unix is not OpenVMS. Things are done differently in different operating environments.

On OpenVMS the queue manager is used to control periodic execution of jobs. This is a different mechanism from cron. It has different strengths and weaknesses. The model is very different.

I'd suggest you try to approach OpenVMS without expecting it to work like Unix. It doesn't. You will be frustrated and disappointed if you expect it to.

Instead of asking "where is cron" you should be asking "how do I execute a job periodically". Think in terms of the problem, not your expected solution.

The same is true going the other way OpenVMS people need to rid themselves of OpenVMS biases when working with Unix.

Even when there is (apparently) a port of cron to OpenVMS, chances are it won't be a 100% match. You're better off finding out about the new environment and working WITH it, rather than trying to force fit it into the model of another environment.

[Peter Zeiszler]

http://forums13.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?admit=109447627+1261150461694+28353475&threadId=1035856

You might be able to use some of the knowledge from this older post.

No Cron in VMS.
Help Queue or help submit. Go from there on managing jobs to run specific days.

[Hoff]

Process control and process management on OpenVMS is a very weak area of OpenVMS; cron is a comparatively primitive solution even on Unix and Linux, and many of the Unix platforms have better solutions (eg: launchd, HighTORC C3, puppet, ganglia, any of the various grid services), and accordingly cron itself is being replaced by various alternatives on these platforms.

Unfortunately and somewhat inexplicably, there's nothing as fancy as even cron on OpenVMS as yet, barring the cron ports that are around.

Which means you are left to use a port of cron, to acquire another open-source or commercial job scheduling package for OpenVMS, or to learn how to hack this on OpenVMS using batch.

[Rob Young_4]

Hima,

Yes.. there is a cron.

See code here:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.vms/msg/dd91f0c133daaeba?dmode=source

And related support .com post here:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.vms/msg/e69f0e54fe65b6db?dmode=source

Note that link above has a "watcher" program. It was such an important part of what I was doing, I could not have cron running (i.e. important production .com jobs were ran out of cron).

The original author is Jim Gessling. You can google groups.google.com and get some of the back story.

Rob