Running a command at Startup

TuxTimo · 02-27-2004, 04:56 PM

Hi Guys,

I'm new here, but I have experience on other boards like this... I think this is quite an obvious question, and probably been asked before. I did search for it, and it didnt turn anything up, so ill ask here.

Well there are some commands I would like to run when I start my machine up, on the computers at Uni, you can just edit the .login file to do this, but on my home linux distro (im running Fedora Core 1, btw), how could I achieve this?

I tried .login, but I cant do it like that... any other ideas?

Cheers,
Tim.

slakmagik · 02-27-2004, 05:17 PM

You mean at login or startup? For login, there's ~/.bash_profile (which goes to ~/.bashrc) and there's ~/.bash_login and/or ~/.profile. For system startup, /etc/rc.d/rc.local in Slack. Not sure in Fedora.

dford · 02-27-2004, 05:19 PM

"On startup" means system bootup, user login or startup of a shell?

The answers are: /etc/rc.d/rc, .bash_profile, and .bashrc respectively. This assumes your shell is bash.

For more info on the rc.d stuff look at Starting Your Software Automatically on Boot

TuxTimo · 02-27-2004, 05:22 PM

well, system bootup, because I want to be able to run it even if I dont login...

Not really sure what shell im using... how could I find out?

tk31337 · 02-27-2004, 05:30 PM

For system bootup it's technically best to make a script in /etc/init.d/ and create a symlink in /etc/rc.d/rc[run-level #]. Just putting a script in the runlevel dir will work too though, but a symlink conserves space and is the standard method.

Anyhow, this doesn't apply to your situation, but if anyone wants a graphical prog to startup when they login, and they're using KDE, there's the ~/.kde/Autostart dir, in which you can actually drag over a desktop link into, and have that link executed when KDE starts.

dford · 02-27-2004, 05:31 PM

If you want this to run on Boot, your shell doesn't matter. However, to find out a quick way to tell what shell you are in is to type the ps command.

The link I gave you should give you the info to run a command on Boot.

If you want to run a command periodically, not just on boot, then you should look in to cron and crontab

Let me know if you need more info.

slakmagik · 02-27-2004, 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by TuxTimo
Not really sure what shell im using... how could I find out?

echo $SHELL
or
echo $0

should say, as well as the ps and then you don't need to eyeball it.

If you mean whether you login at all or not, then, yeah, it'd be a system runlevel file. But if you mean whether it's a login shell or not, then ~/.bashrc will do it.