How to schedule *interactive* task with at or cron

fast_rizwaan · 09-05-2005, 03:59 PM

I need to run bittorrent-curses and giFTcurs between 2am - 8am only for free unlimited download, except 2-8am bandwidth is too costly.

So, could you please advise me on how to run Interative programs like "bittorrent-curses" or "vi" or "pico", "emacs" etc., which requires user interaction like typing etc.,

The problem with at and cron (what I found upto now with googling) is that it won't run jobs interactively (really?) and only run task in backgound. I need to run the task interactively.

I use adsl-start and adsl-stop to start and stop internet connection.

To run vi

Code:

echo vi | at now + 1 min

After 1 minute Nothing shows up .

I want to run these commands adsl-start runs fine but bittorrent-curses won't run

Code:


echo /usr/sbin/adsl-start| at 0200
echo /usr/bin/bittorrent-curses ~/mytorrent.torrent| at 0201

same with crontab -e

Code:


#Run daily -> Start Internet connection at 2:00 AM
0 2 * * * /usr/sbin/adsl-start

#Run daily -> start bittorrent curses interface to download mytorrent.torrent file
1 2 * * * /usr/bin/bittorrent-curses ~/mytorrent.torrent

#Run daily -> Stop Internet connection at 8:00 AM
0 8 * * * /usr/sbin/adsl-stop

The adsl-start & adsl-stop works fine at 2:00am and 8:00am, but bittorrent-curses won't show up not even in ps -aux | grep bittorrent-curses .

I need to run interactive programs at a specific time, how could I do that? is there any way?

jailbait · 09-05-2005, 04:17 PM

"I need to run interactive programs at a specific time, how could I do that? is there any way?"

You could try reading the required responses from a file:

/usr/bin/bittorrent-curses ~/mytorrent.torrent < all.the.answers.txt

---------------------------
Steve Stites

fast_rizwaan · 09-07-2005, 05:21 PM

I want the "Curses" ncurses based application to come up in the foreground, as if you run it by typing bittorrent-curses on the shell.

ok forget bittorrent-curses, let's take "vi" editor,

how will you run vi editor using cron or at after 2 min. if you run vi using this command

echo vi | at now+2min

will successfully run the command but in background and it won't show up.

can you make it run "vi" as you'd run from bash sheel by typing vi???

blindcoder · 09-08-2005, 02:23 AM

You can do something like this since the machine will run anyway:

Open a terminal (xterm, konsole or console login) and type this:
while [ `date +%H%M` -lt 200 -o `date +%H%M` -gt 800 ] ; do sleep 60 ; done ; adsl-start ; /usr/bin/bittorrent-curses ~/mytorrent.torrent

What this will do is this: every minute it checks if the time is between 02:00 AM and 08:00 AM and if it is it will stop the loop, run adsl-start and run bittorrent-curses. You can then use at to run adsl-stop at 08:00 AM, bittorrent will continue to run but without an internet connection there's nothing it can do :)
You can also add a "killall bittorrent-curses" to the at job at 08:00 AM to make sure bittorrent stops.

Greetings,
blindy

fast_rizwaan · 09-09-2005, 06:26 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by blindcoder
You can do something like this since the machine will run anyway:

Open a terminal (xterm, konsole or console login) and type this:
while [ `date +%H%M` -lt 200 -o `date +%H%M` -gt 800 ] ; do sleep 60 ; done ; adsl-start ; /usr/bin/bittorrent-curses ~/mytorrent.torrent

thanks blindy, that's what I've been asking for. I wanna give you a big HUG. ">

<" (yahoo smiley for hugging)