ok i know that crontab can be used to execute scripts at a set time or every x minutes....i can find loads of stuff about that but its the scripts i cant figure out

heres what i want it for

we use ubuntu and run a minecraft server (using craftbukkit)
our procedure is to load it into a screen so we can have remote access to it
all that works really well and ubuntu is wonderfully stable for it

but we need to do two things

1) every 30 minutes we need a script to:

• gointo the screen ( screen -dr xxxx where xxxx seems to be a random number)
• enter the following text into the screen as though it was typed save-all (ENTER KEY)

2) at 0550 every day we need a script to:

• gointo the screen ( screen -dr xxxx where xxxx seems to be a random number)
• enter the following text into the screen as though it was typed say server going down in 10 minutes {ENTER KEY)
• sleep 60
• enter the following text into the screen as though it was typed say server going down in 9 minutes {ENTER KEY)
• sleep 60
• ...so on till it gets to 0
• enter the following text into the screen as though it was typed stop {ENTER KEY)
• sleep 300
• enter ./start.sh

now as you can see i know the wait command is sleep n (amount of seconds)
but the screen is always a random number which means any script has to have the new number entered (theres got to be an easier way).
since when you go into the screen its the console not a proper terminal session (you just type into it the same as a terminal) i dont even know if what im asking can be done

**side note**
there are tons of plugins for the software to do the save-all bit ...but as new builds are appearing weekily sometime daily lol these get broken, and a plugin uses resources, spams the console and is yet another plugin to look at when stuff goes wrong, i think crontab would be a more sensible route

thnx in advance

Personally, if there was a plugin available I'd use it, no point reinventing the wheel unless you can do a better job of it.

gives you the numbers of screen running

while you want to reattach to the screen running you commonly need only "-r" option which reattaches you to only one running screen session.

while doing this on multiple running screens:
will need a "-dr xxx" option which was listed "-ls"

problem is plugins use up memory even when not being used and thye go wrong...infact our autosave plugin is currently fubar.


@lithos (sorry i dont know how to multi quote)

thats the problem everyreboot the numbers are different so no set script could be used as each time it would be opening a different screen

i was taught to use screen -dr to list them and screen -dr xxxx (xxxx being the screeen number ) to get into them

sorry to bump but i still have issues

lots of googling has helped but still stuck

ok ...

screen -S max creates a screen that is named max

screen -dr max connects to it

thats part of the problem solved (a major part of it)

now if i make a script that adds

screen -S max -X stuff "say testing 10 ^M"

it will send say testing 10 ^M to the screen but it just sits on the screens input line dosnt enter it (which i thought the ^M was for)

infact a little test script i made

results in the input line reading say testing 10 ^Msay testing 20 ^Msay testover ^M

how do i make it send a return key?

I haven't looked at this thread in detail, but perhaps Expect would be useful to you (and it's probably already on your system, or in your distro's repositories).

Also, you have to do multi-quoting manually (i.e. going to each post, pressing the "Quote" button and copying all those into one post). Some forums have a multi-quote facility, but alas LQ is not one of them.

have book marked that, if im unable to send a return key stroke (all im missing at mo) i will look into this further thank you

on a side note ...why call it screen!?!? why ? do they have any idea how many irelevent results google finds when you look for "screen help" "send return key to screen" *quietly sobs in the corner*

Maybe try googling with "GNU screen". I often have the same problem when I'm googling for information related to R (which is a language for statistics and data analysis) .

ouch ( http://www.google.co.uk/search?rlz=1...for+statistics ) ?

i found it!
now i have no idea why it works or if thiers a simplier way but its what i was able to disasemble from some examples of other scrips dotted about ...it works..i may of created a monster but it works it actualy works!!!!

Yes. I usually write "r-project" in Google, which often helps.

Anyway, glad you found a solution to your problem. I'm not an expert with Screen, so hopefully someone else will tell you if there's a better way to do what you want .

yep now its a case of creating test scripts that just use say commands and see if it looks all good before i use actual commands