NAME

runpause - run a program after a specified delay

SYNOPSIS

runpause [-hV] [-L label ] secs program [ args ... ]

DESCRIPTION

runpause sleeps for secs (or until interrupted by a signal), and then runs program with any arguments given in args.

If secs is 0, runpause will pause forever, or until interrupted by a signal.

If program does not contain a ``/'' slash character, runpause will perform a shell-like search for the executable using the PATH variable in the current environment.

OPTIONS

-h: Help. Print a brief usage message to stderr and exit.
-L label: Label. May be used to provide label as a distinctive command-line marker for an instance of runpause, such as for reference in ps(1) listings. Otherwise, this option has no effect.
-V: Version. Print the version number to stderr and exit.

EXAMPLES

The runpause utility may be used to hack a perpetrate(5) service out of what would normally be a system initialization:

#!/bin/sh
exec 2>&1
if test ${1} = 'start' ; then


  # startup network:


  echo "starting network ..."


  ifconfig ...


  # maintain persistent state for this service:


  exec runpause -L network 0 /bin/true
fi
if test ${1} = 'reset' ; then


  # take down network and whatever depends on it:


  echo "resetting network ..."


  ...
fi
### EOF

The author does not recommend this sort of thing and will never mention it again.

EXIT STATUS

runpause exits with one of the following values:

0: program was invoked and completed successfully. In this case, the exit code is returned by the program, rather than by runpause itself.
100: runpause failed because of a usage error, such as an invalid command-line option or argument. In this case, runpause prints a brief error message and usage help to stderr on exit.
111: runpause failed due to some system or resource error. In this case, runpause prints a brief diagnostic message to stderr on exit.
1-127: program was invoked and failed with its own non-zero exit status.

AUTHOR

Wayne Marshall, http://b0llix.net/perp/