Something like sleep $(($(date +%S)*3)) More random would be to use nanoseconds (see date manpage), but then you'd have to cook up an algorithm to test and toss out values (arguments to 'sleep') which you didn't want. On 05/15/2013 11:44 AM Matt wrote: > I have a shell script that's run every 5 minutes I use to call many > other shell scripts. Is there a way to wait a random number of > seconds before executing each line? Something like this. > > wait_random 10 - 180 (perl /scripts/my_script.pl) & > wait_random 10 - 180 (perl /scripts/my_script5.pl) & > wait_random 10 - 180 (perl /scripts/my_script7.pl) & > > I have many entries in this file and I background them all because > most must poll network devices which can take time. None should take > over 2 minutes though. > > When I run them all at once they bog the system and cause some of > latency graphs on equipment being monitored to look poor. > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >