Temoprarily Disabling User Crons on cPanel VPS

[Fidget]

I'm partly being a bit lazy here, but on the other hand perhaps we could put something together for the benfit of all users (I remember coming across a script that would do this but have lost the link) ...

I'm seeig repeated excessive usage by one of our user accounts via cron during the night when we run our backup and cpup scripts, the effect is of course heavy slowdowns on our VPS Hosting.

What I'd like to do is temporarily disable user cron jobs (either all users or selective users) during a specific period so that our VPS Hosting can complete cpbackup and cpup without interruption.

I think a cron job under root would be best, to perhaps moving the user cron jobs from /var/spool/cron to /var/spool/cron.suspended and then back again at the end of the period, but I am sure some of us could recommend another/more efficient alternative.

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[vzAddict]

Hello,

cPanel automatically stops the backup or cPanel update processes if the load increases on the server. You need to write a custom script which will check if the backup process and cPanel update is running or not. If backup or cPanel update scripts are not running then the script which is created by a user will be executed otherwise it wont do anything.

[Fidget]

I was fully aware of the low priority cpup has. Running a script to sense when these processes are running and then disabling user(s) cron could lead to momentary slow downs when if the user(s) cron is already running (you'd either have to kill the process or let it run until it completes for proper working), so it wouldn't do. Even if you wrote the script to wait and try later, you run the risk of falling foul of an exceptionally resource intensive user cron job and not seeing your cpup and cpbackup running at the appropriate times, unless you kill it.

I've just written a small script to move the user(s) cron jobs to suspended.cron just before the said scripts run and another script to put them back a couple of hours later when I know they'll be complete. That entails two cron jobs.

Its better here to stop the crons from running just before I know cpup and cpbackup are going to run, at least they will always complete before the majority of our client account holders will be up in the morning to experience any slow down.