I'm trying to use 'at' to schedule running xine to play a live stream. I set it up with :

[dell_3] {root} (20040929) 20:01 ~ $ at 8:02pm
at> xine
at> <EOT>
job 31 at 2004-09-29 20:02
[dell_3] {root} (20040929) 20:01 ~ $ atq
31 2004-09-29 20:02 a root

But when xine starts, I get no output, only an error mail message. The mail message is not unexpected, since 'at' send standard output to a mail message, but I thought I could get the play er to run and play the stream.

[dell_3] {root} (20040929) 20:01 ~ $ mail
Mail version 8.1 6/6/93. Type ? for help.
"/var/spool/mail/root": 1 message 1 new
>N 1 root@localhost.local Wed Sep 29 20:02 19/792 "Output from your job 31"
& 1
Message 1:
From root@localhost.localdomain Wed Sep 29 20:02:00 2004
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 20:02:00 -0400
From: root <root@localhost.localdomain>
Subject: Output from your job 31
To: root@localhost.localdomain

Executing .bashrc
Cannot open display
This is xine (X11 gui) - a free video player v0.99.2.
(c) 2000-2004 The xine Team.

'at' states that it runs the command under /bin/sh, so I treid this explicitly :

[dell_3] {root} (20040929) 20:09 ~ $ /bin/sh
sh-2.05b# xine
This is xine (X11 gui) - a free video player v0.99.2.
(c) 2000-2004 The xine Team.
sh-2.05b# exit
exit

This worked OK and the xine gui came up.

The DISPLAY variable seems kind of light :

[dell_3] {root} (20040929) 20:09 ~ $ echo $DISPLAY
:0.0

but when I set it to my computer name, it still dies.
[dell_3] {root} (20040929) 20:25 ~ $ export DISPLAY=dell_3:0.0
[dell_3] {root} (20040929) 20:26 ~ $ echo $DISPLAY
dell_3:0.0

I even tried settin appropriate switches on xine to not show any gui or window, but to no avail.
So, is there any way I can use 'at' to schedule the running of xine to play a live stream?

I'd rather be using 'crontab', but after setting up a /etc/cron file, I can't get anything to even start up. Thanks.

I think the problem is that the DISPLAY variable is not set in the environment that xine is running in (I might be wrong, I haven't used at to schedule a process). Try creating a shell script like this:

#!/bin/bash
DISPLAY=:0.0
xine (args)

make it executable, and then schedule that with at and see if it works.

Thanks. I tried it with a small testcase, and this works. I tried it using gnome-crontab, and the xine window comes up, and starts playing the URL. Thanks again.