randomize execution the a script?

[Charles Howse]

> Gil Agno Virtucio wrote:
> > Hi. I want to randomize the execution of a shell script. 
> Can i use cron 
> > to do this? or are there other available tools that i can 
> use to do this?
> 
> See 'man 6 random' and 'man sleep'.
> Then try doing something like this in the background:
> 
> #!/bin/sh
> while true
> do
>    random -e 60
>    randomNumber=$?
>    sleep $randomNumber
>    <do shell script here>
> done
> 
> Where '60' means, maximum 60 seconds between two script calls.
> 
> There might be better or nices ways of doing this :).

I don't happen to have random installed on my system, however jot is
installed with the base system, and will generate random numbers quite
well.  For example 'jot -r 1 1 60' will generate a single random number
between 1 and 60.

Won't randomNumber=$? Just return 0 if the previous command completes
successfully?
Shouldn't it be:
randomNumber=`random -e 60`
Or better yet randomNumber=`jot -r 1 1 60`