When starting a command using delay.py, delays the start of subsequent calls. This can be useful to e.g. limit peak file system load on a computing cluster.

delay.py

#!/usr/bin/env python2.7
import sys, os.path
import subprocess
import time
import lockfile
import threading

lock = lockfile.FileLock(os.path.join(os.path.expanduser("~"), ".delay"))
lock.acquire()

# start thread that locks the file for delay seconds
def sleepDelay():
    with lock:
        time.sleep(float(sys.argv[1]))

th = threading.Thread(target=sleepDelay)
th.start()

# if command given, run it
if (len(sys.argv) > 2):
    p = subprocess.Popen(" ".join(sys.argv[2:]),
                         stdin=sys.stdin,
                         stdout=sys.stdout,
                         stderr=sys.stderr,
                         shell=True)
    p.wait()