Opening a terminal window through Cron

Phaethar · 12-21-2005, 09:33 AM

Hey all,

I'm trying to find a way to get a scheduled job to open up in an xterm window every day. I've used Cron enough, and I've tried a few different methods of this, but no matter how I try it the job will always run in the background. So, I need to find out of there's a way to schedule a job and have it open up and run in an xterm window. The system I'm attempting this on is a Fedora 4 system.

Any way to do this?

TIA

Gort32 · 12-21-2005, 09:43 AM

In order to have an app appear in X without being run by the actual user, you will have to set your DISPLAY varible.

Code:

#!/usr/bin/bash
export DISPLAY=:0
/usr/X11R6/bin/xterm

You may have to play with your xhost permissions as well - check out man xhost for details.

sundialsvcs · 12-21-2005, 09:44 AM

It seems to me that another way to do this would be to have a logged-on user running a scheduler/alarm-clock program within his own session. If the session remained logged-on ...

Phaethar · 12-21-2005, 09:46 AM

Quote:

In order to have an app appear in X without being run by the actual user, you will have to set your DISPLAY varible.

Thanks Gort32, I'll give this a shot. Sounds like it may do what I'm looking for.

Quote:

It seems to me that another way to do this would be to have a logged-on user running a scheduler/alarm-clock program within his own session.

This is what we're doing now, and it's having some strange issues. So, as a way to test this, I wanted to have the OS fire things off intead of a scheduler.

Thanks!

Phaethar · 12-21-2005, 10:21 AM

Quote:

In order to have an app appear in X without being run by the actual user, you will have to set your DISPLAY varible.

Ok, still no luck with this. If I set up a script and run it manually, this works great, and I can control where the xterm shows up.

However, setting it up to run automatcially through Cron will result in nothing showing up. It runs, according to the logs.. but the xterm window will not show up using this method.

So, back to the drawing board for now.

Any other suggestions on how to get a terminal or xterm window to open using Cron (or something similar)?

Gort32 · 12-21-2005, 12:53 PM

Try running xhost + as the user in a terminal, then have cron go off.

Phaethar · 12-21-2005, 02:02 PM

Gort32,

xhost + tells me that access control is disabled and that clients can connect from any host. However, still no luck in getting Cron to spawn a new terminal or xterm window. Again, the job seems to run, but nothing will show up on screen.

I know this is by design with Cron, but it sure would be nice if there was an option to run a scheduled job in a terminal window to see the results in real time.

Thanks for your help on this.