Trouble with Scheduled Task Execution Timing in PowerShell on Staging Server
Hey everyone, I'm running into an issue that's driving me crazy. While refining a PowerShell script to manage scheduled tasks in our staging environment, I've run into a timing issue that's causing some confusion. The goal is to execute a specific task every hour, but it seems that the task is being triggered multiple times within that hour, leading to overlapping executions. Here's the relevant portion of my script: ```powershell $action = New-ScheduledTaskAction -Execute 'C:\Scripts\MyScript.ps1' $trigger = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger -AtHour 1 -Daily $settings = New-ScheduledTaskSettingsSet -AllowStartIfOnBatteries -DontStopIfGoingOnBatteries -StartWhenAvailable Register-ScheduledTask -Action $action -Trigger $trigger -Settings $settings -TaskName 'MyHourlyTask' -User 'SYSTEM' ``` Initially, I thought the issue might be with how I configured the trigger. As a test, I adjusted it to check if it was set for every hour on the hour instead of just daily: ```powershell $trigger = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger -Hourly -At (Get-Date).AddMinutes(5) ``` This change seemed to reduce the number of executions, but I still ended up with some overlaps. Each instance of the task creates a log file, and while I can see multiple log entries within the same hour, it’s unclear how the trigger is interpreting the time settings. Additionally, I’ve checked the task history through the Task Scheduler GUI, and it confirms that the task is indeed firing more than once. I explored the possibility of implementing a lock mechanism in the script itself to prevent it from running concurrently: ```powershell $lock = New-Object System.Threading.Mutex($false, 'MyUniqueLockName') if (-not $lock.WaitOne(0)) { Write-Host 'Task already running. Exiting...' exit } try { # Main script logic here } finally { $lock.ReleaseMutex() } ``` While this has helped, I’m curious if there’s a more appropriate configuration for the scheduled task or if I might be missing a finer point regarding how PowerShell handles task scheduling under the hood. Could there be any specific settings in Windows Task Scheduler that might affect this behavior at a system level? Any insights or experiences would be greatly appreciated. What am I doing wrong? My development environment is CentOS. What am I doing wrong? Could someone point me to the right documentation?