[mythtv-users] Randomizing startup times for mythfilldatabase from cron

[Brad DerManouelian]

On Feb 13, 2006, at 8:24 PM, Yeechang Lee wrote:

> Greg Estabrooks <greg at phaze.org> says:
>>> So when is the best time to be running the cron job for retrieving
>>> listings?
>>
>> Don't use a cronjob, use the built in ability for the backend to run
>> mythfilldatabase itself. It will honour the suggested downlaod time
>> from zap2it and allow them to spread their load.
>
> And, for those of us who are still holding off on upgrading to 0.19
> for one reason or another and are still using crontab, do what I do,
> based on the recommendation in Jarod Wilson's guide:
>
> ### Run mythfilldatabase every night randomly in a 4-hour block  
> after 3:01am
> 01 3 * * * sleep $(expr $RANDOM \% 14400) && mythfilldatabase > / 
> var/log/mythtv/mythfilldatabase.log 2>&1
>
> I'm a little surprised, based on the discussions I see here, of the
> number of people who apparently *weren't* doing something like this
> already; go figure.

I figured lots of people were doing this at the wee hours in the  
morning, so I set mine to update randomly between 10AM-1PM EST.  
Looking forward to upgrading to 0.19 and using the suggested time.