best place to launch a utility upon login

hamster · 05-22-2003, 12:25 PM

Hi,

I wish to run seti@home everything I log in automatically. At the moment I manually run it and manually stop it again before I log out. I have a script for this.

I wondering where is the best place to put this? Would it make sense to start in it rc.local or call it from .bash_profile (although this called each time I open a terminal??)

Or even a cron? But maybe that isn't necessary since I don't launch it according to a given time.

slightcrazed · 05-22-2003, 12:30 PM

Anything you want to run at start up you should be able to enter into your ~/.Xsession file. Some distro's don't come with this file, but you should be able to create one easy enough, and X will run it everytime it starts.

slight

cmfarley19 · 05-22-2003, 12:31 PM

I run seti from cron with:

Code:

0,15,30,45 * * * * cd /home/cfarley/seti; ./setiathome > /dev/null 2> /dev/null

Tries to run every 15 minutes. Does nothing if already running.

Give that a shot.

hamster · 05-22-2003, 12:57 PM

Apologies slightcrazed,

I meant to mention my distro. It's RedHat 9. I never knew about the .xsession file. The .bash_profile isn't on though?

cmfarley19,

I actually use a seti cache manager: Sebseti. It was written in perl and handle x units. I think if I put it in a cron I *think* it will start a new session every 15 minutes.. but I'll give it a go!

Thanks for the ideas guys! Again the .bash_profile runs only once when I log in first doesn't it? Not when I open each "window".

tcaptain · 05-22-2003, 01:10 PM

so which should it be? .bash_profile? I'm actually curious because I wanted to slap in fortune after I login in

(I'm figuring .Xsessions is only for when you fire up the wm right?)

slightcrazed · 05-22-2003, 01:13 PM

The only harm with putting it in the .bash_profile is that if you log into a shell terminal it will try to run the .bash_profile again, and might start seti again as a job under whatever user you logged in as.... i.e.

You log into RH 9 using graphical interface as user, .bash_profile in your users home directory is run, and starts Seti. You then CTRL+ALT+F1 and log in as the same user again at a terminal, your .bash_profile is run again and try's to start seti again, and you either get an error (if it can't run without X), or you end up with 2 instances of it.

Other than that, I don't really think there is any harm.

slight

cmfarley19 · 05-22-2003, 02:33 PM

As long as the -nolock option is not used, only ome instance of seti will be allowed to run.

hamster · 05-22-2003, 03:07 PM

excellent advice guys.

Thanks!