How can I reboot my Linux system every 60 seconds?

Question

I am debugging some embedded hardware that runs Linux 3.2.6 Angstrom distro, I need the unit to reboot every 60 seconds. I tried this:

In /etc/rc5.d : S99reboot -> /home/root/test.sh
/home/root/test.sh contains only this: /home/root/rebootunit.sh&
/home/root/rebootunit.sh has this:
echo "sleep 60 and reboot"
sleep 60
reboot

works fine from the command line, but when run from startup, the unit starts to shutdown, then gets stuck with this:

Deactivating swap...
Unmounting local filesystems...

Give root password for system maintenance
(or type Control-D for normal startup):

And the filesystem is in read-only mode. I'm not sure why this happened, or if there is another way to do this - I'm open to suggestions, thanks

Answer 1

Append shutdown -r 60 to /etc/rc.local.

Answer 2

I would put

* * * * * /sbin/reboot

in root's crontab.

Clarification: since cron doesn't run until the system is fully up, you don't get conflicts between startup and shutdown procedures.

Answer 3

It would be good to issue the reboot command only after the system is fully booted and all boot activities are complete. Using rc.local is a good idea but the fact that it is a foreground command might still be a problem. So backgrounding the command might also be a good idea.

shutdown -r 30 &

Or issue an at job (from rc.local) that does it outside the start-up scripts:

at -f /home/root/test.sh now

Answer 4

[root@linux]crontab -e

Then append this line:

* * * * * /sbin/reboot

It will create new cron job that reboots your machine every minute.

Good luck!