Automatically Run a Command Every 5 Minutes

I'm very new to using Linux and especially with command line. I've managed to successfully get a Plex Media Server up and running but I need to run the following command every 5 minutes to sync with my Amazon Drive.

acd_cli sync

I've tried various different methods such as bash scripts and can't get it to work. I just need the command above to run every 5 minutes and it feels like there's an easy way which I don't know about.

You can use

crontab -e

to create a user cron schedule.

The line you specifically need is

*/5 * * * * /home/YOU/backup.sh

In backup.sh add any commands you want to run, make sure the script is executable, i.e. chmod +x backup.sh

Have a look at

http://www.unixgeeks.org/security/newbie/unix/cron-1.html

Easy Method

You can set up a bash script that loops forever executing that command then sleeping for 5 minutes.

Open a terminal and execute this command:

sudo nano /usr/local/bin/amazon-sync

Then, type the following:

#!/bin/sh  
while true  
do  
  acd_cli sync  
  sleep 300  
done

Press ctrl+o to save

Press ctrl+x to exit

Execute this command:

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/amazon-sync  

When you start up your computer press ctrl+alt+t and type amazon-sync then minimize the terminal window. Command will run once every 5 minutes (300 seconds).

There's also watch command, if you need to show output on screen and clear automatically.

watch -n 300 acd_cli sync

When you say 5 minutes, Do you mean 5 minutes or will you forget about the command In 5 minutes and leave It running Indefinitely

There's so many options to choose from, But I'll show you 4 clever ways to Implement this.

for (( i=0; i<=20; i++)); do 'acd_cli sync' $i ;sleep 300; done

This says that i Is 0, Then 0 Is less than 20, So It will minus 1 until It reaches 0. So It will run 20 times. Every 5 minutes

while true; do 'acd_cli sync'; sleep 300; done | at now +30 min

This says while true, do the command given every 5 minutes, Starting now for 30 minutes long, To run this command you'll need to Install at by running apt install at --assume-yes, Not exactly sure that this will work on a loop though

while true [ $i -lt 20 ]; do 'acd_cli sync' & i=$[$i+1];sleep 300; done

This command says, While $i remains lower than 20 do the Amazon Cloud Drive Command Line Interface you listed, Then i Is still i plus one on every occurrence of the command, Every 5 minutes forever

for i in $(seq 20); do 'acd_cli sync' $i; sleep 300; done

This says For the Input sequence 20 do the Amazon Cloud Drive sync, Every 5 minutes 20 times