Scheduling script with pauses

goshawk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I want to run a script that takes at least a week to run, on a computer that is used for other purposes during the day. Is it possible to pause the script at a given hour, say 6 AM, temporarily write everything in memory to a file until another given hour, say 9 PM, and then resume?

I would try to write the script so that it could be broken into parts, but it's a single line leading to a black-box C interface that takes so many days. It's okay if this isn't possible; it would just be easier if it would be.

Not sure if it matters, but this is on a Unix system.

Comment on Scheduling script with pauses

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Re: Scheduling script with pauses by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Oct 10, 2013 at 02:52 UTC
Under Windows, I often use the ProcessManager to pause a process; and then later resume it. Provided the machine isn't shutdown or re-started, this works well. Even if it is using a substantial amount of memory, once paused, any other processes that need memory simple cause its memory to get swapped out; and it get swapped back in once resumed. Try: `kill -STOP <yourpid>` and then later: `kill -CONT <yourpid>`. With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday' Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error. "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Scheduling script with pauses by dmitri (Priest) on Oct 10, 2013 at 03:49 UTC
It's quite easy, just send suspend and resume signals to the process: `sh$ kill -STOP $pid # this suspends it sh$ kill -CONT $pid # this resumes it` [download] You can stick that in your crontab. If there is a process group to suspend and resume, use -$pid. Pretty much, read kill(2) man page. Update: I see this answer was given already, I did not read to the end of BrowserUk's post first time around (I gave up around "Windows" :))	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Scheduling script with pauses ( suspend-to-disk ) by Anonymous Monk on Oct 10, 2013 at 01:55 UTC
but it's a single line leading to a black-box C interface that takes so many days And there in lies the problem -- without cooperation its not going to work well Most computers have a "hibernate" mode, aka syspend-to-disk, and it works when every program is suspended including the operating system, and the memory is dumped to a pagefile on the disk hibernating a single process can get very tricky ... but I imagine if you've got the RAM, and you run a virtual machine, you can simply hibernate the virtual machine ... Good luck	[reply]