Set time in cronjob for camera

Question

I've installed motion mmal on Raspberry Pi and its recording video whenever I run startmotion script:

 #!/bin/sh
 nohup /home/pi/mmal/motion -n -c /home/pi/mmal/motion-mmalcam.conf        1>/dev/null 2>&1 </dev/null &

However, Its making continuous video until I stop motion.

I want to make a video of 5 minute after every 10 minutes. I tried the timeout command:

 #!/bin/sh
 timeout 5m nohup /home/pi/mmal/motion -n -c /home/pi/mmal/motion-mmalcam.conf        1>/dev/null 2>&1 </dev/null &

I was able to run script after every 1 hour by using this code:

0 * * * * nohup /home/pi/mmal/motion -n -c /home/pi/mmal/motion-                   mmalcam.conf        1>/dev/null 2>&1 </dev/null &

5 * * * * pkill -9 motion

How can I run this script after every 10 minutes?

Answer 1

Did the timeout option work, though?..

Anyway, if you want to run the cron commands you listed every 10 minutes, then this should work:

*/10 * * * * nohup /home/pi/mmal/motion -n -c /home/pi/mmal/motion-mmalcam.conf 1>/dev/null 2>&1 </dev/null &

5-59/10 * * * * pkill -9 motion

You set the "step" after the / , default step is 1, and * is equivalent to "range" 0-59 for minutes. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/19204734/1375470 for a great explanation.

By the way, if timeout command works, it would look better (aesthetically) in cron, as a single command at */10 IMO.