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Glutanimate
Asked: 2013-01-02 17:30:33 +0800 CST

How can I run anacron in user mode?

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I would like to set up a scheduled task via anacron but I would like to do so in user mode. How can I achieve this?

users

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can set up a separate anacron instance to run in user mode:

    1. Create a .anacron folder in your home directory and in it two subfolders, etc and spool:

      mkdir -p ~/.anacron/{etc,spool}

    2. Create a new file ~/.anacron/etc/anacrontab with contents similar to the following:

      # /etc/anacrontab: configuration file for anacron

# See anacron(8) and anacrontab(5) for details.

SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

# period  delay  job-identifier  command
1         10     testjob         test.sh

    3. Add the following line to your crontab using crontab -e:

      @hourly /usr/sbin/anacron -s -t $HOME/.anacron/etc/anacrontab -S $HOME/.anacron/spool
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  2. This worked for me (thanks), but I didn't use the last step given in the answer:

    Then add the following line to your ~/.profile:

    I'm using Ubuntu Studio 12.10 Quantal and in my case instead of that last step I put that one liner here: “Applications Menu” → “Settings” → “Settings Manager” then in the Settings Manager under “Session and Startup” then the “Application Autostart” tab.

    This is for those of us that are GUI users, because ~/.profile is only sourced by bash when it starts a log-in interactive shell (even ~/bashrc is not so useful since that is only sourced when bash is starting an interactive shell).

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