$ cat 000-delay.cron
#!/bin/bash

# Generate per system static delay for cron.{daily,weekly,monthly}

# (P) & (C) 2006 by Peter Bieringer <pb@bieringer.de>
#
# 20060322/PB: initial release
# rewrite for configure 20070830 <mmaslano@redhat.com>
# License: GPLv2

[ -f /etc/sysconfig/crontab ] && . /etc/sysconfig/crontab
if [ ! -z "$DELAY" ]; then
        # Create md5sum of hostname (static over system lifetime)
        md5sum="`echo ${HOSTNAME} | md5sum`"

        # Extract the first 3 hexdigits (12 Bit: 0-4095)
        hexvalue="${md5sum:0:3}"

        # Create decimal value
        decvalue="`printf "%d" "0x${hexvalue}"`"

        # Divide delay by factor
        T_DELAY=$[ ${decvalue} / ${DELAY} ]
        sleep $T_DELAY
fi
exit 0