mikas blog

One of the tools you probably already have on your system but might not be aware of: at. at(1) reads commands from standard input or a specified file which are to be executed at a later time. Some usage examples (notice: you’ll get the <EOT> by pressing ctrl-d, you know):

Download something at a given time:

% at 02:00
warning: commands will be executed using /bin/sh
at> wget http://debian.netcologne.de/www.grml.org/daily/grml_sid_latest.iso
at> <EOT>
job 11 at Tue Dec 10 02:00:00 2008

Send yourself a mail in 5 minutes:

% at now + 5 minutes
warning: commands will be executed using /bin/sh
at> df -h | mail mika@localhost
at> <EOT>
job 12 at Mon Dec 9 14:47:00 2008

Make sure to catch the pizza:

% echo “DISPLAY=:0 Xdialog –msgbox ‘Time for Pizza’ 0 0” | at now + 10 minutes
warning: commands will be executed using /bin/sh
job 13 at Mon Dec 9 14:52:00 2008

Oh of course: make sure that the at-daemon is running at all (‘/etc/init.d/atd start’). atq lists the pending jobs and atrm allows you to delete jobs. Check out the at(1) manpage for further details.

This entry was posted by mika on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 14:42 and is filed under Computer, English. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.