[olug] Anybody know anything about cron?

[Jay Swackhamer]

In your script you would need to set all variables needed to run what you
want.....think of running without any environment set
i.e.

0 5 * * * /home/whoever/bin/alarm
###############################################################
#!/bin/sh
export TERM=xterm
export DISPLAY=:0.0

cd /opt/music/big__rich/horse_of_a_different_color/
/usr/bin/xmms save_a_horse_ride_a_cowboy.mp3
###################################################################

Then you could setup a cron entry to find/kill after whenever

2 5 * * * /usr/local/bin/killprocs xmms
##################################################################
#!/bin/bash

PROC=$1

kill `ps -ef | grep ${PROC} | awk ' { print $2 } '`
##################################################################

> I'm trying to set up cron to be an alarm on my box and to start playing
> a song or playlist using xmms. Nothing seems to work. I am on Mandrake
> 10.1 and all security is set to standard. After much trial and error and
> using this forum I got it to work by setting a script called 'alarm'
> with the following syntax:
>
> #!/bin/sh
> export TERM=xterm
> mpg123 "<song_title>"
>
> and my crontab looks like:
>
> * * * * * <home>/alarm
>
> First of all, yes the script is executable and the <home> and
> <song_title> are the actual directory and song title.
>
> That worked fine but it will load mpg123 in xterm and I can't see it so
> I have to manually search out the PID using 'ps aux | grep mpg' and kill
> it manually.
>
> I know I've done this on previous versions of Mandrake where my crontab
> was a very simple line such as: * * * * * /usr/bin/xmms "<song_title>"
>
> Anyone know any ways of making cron start an X app?
>
> By the way, as a test, I ran a cron job to do: * * * * * /usr/bin/xmms
> and redirected the output to a log file and got the following message:
> "** CRITICAL **: Unable to open display".
>
> So, I thought to add localhost to the xhosts access control using "xhost
> + localhost". It was successfully added but still nothing.
>
> I've tried using "at" also and it won't work and I've tried creating
> cron jobs through webmin and when you click on the link there is nothing
> there, the page doesn't even move.
>
> Any suggestions?
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>


-- 
Jay Swackhamer
Reboot The User
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Suite 135
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(402) 933-6449
(402) 933-6456 Fax
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