CRON job on mac

Hello,
Not quite the right category for this but don't think the answer would be found in the non server forum.
I would like to schedule a CRON job on 10.5 (not server), done it in older version, either I can't remember or it's changed... doesn OSX have crontab?
Every 1 minute I want to call a php function on a webserver (which doesn't allow CRON)....
m

Hi
On OSX Client its in /usr/lib. You should see an alias for cron and within that should be what you want. However you might be able to achieve what you want with launchd and its utility launchctl? Consult the manual pages for usage.
There is a specific Terminal and Command Line Forum over on the 10.4 Server Forum:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=701
You could check this forum out as it does focus on the command line and applescript amongst other things:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=162
Tony

Similar Messages

Cron job not running - script uses rsync, ssh (with id_rsa)

Does anyone know how to get cron to run a rsync/ssh script which uses id_rsa for passwordless logins?
I have a backup script I have slaved for months over that works wonderfully when running it from the command line.
It uses rsync and connects with SSH (passwordless using ssh keys). I have setup id_rsa and id_rsa.pub for passwordless logins (this is my user account, and connects using root@ to the server)
As stated all works find when run from the command line. But when I setup a cron job to run this file (exact same line I run from the command line) it does not execute. Actually, it does run, as I have an email notifiction which sends to me. It is just the rsync/ssh part that does not run.
I have spent days and days trying to figure it out. No error messages occur, nothing. Took me a while to find out cron is emailing the user account on Lion the messages (not to a proper email address).
The error shows a permission denied, which I believe to be the cron user cannot use the id_rsa/ssh connection.
Cron is running the script as my user, the same I use on the command line. I even tried copying the id_rsa to the root user .ssh folder in case cron is running as root but that does not work either.
So does anyone know how to get cron to run this rsync/ssh script which used id_rsa for passwordless logins?
Thanks a lot

YES! Got it working, finally!
So the issue is indeed cron/launchd not being able to access the ssh-agent which holds the key.
So this is the solution...
Download keychain for Mac:
http://www.funtoo.org/wiki/Keychain
Then once its installed and configured, the script to run needs this added to the top:
eval `keychain --noask --eval id_rsa` || exit 1
Note I am using id_rsa whereas keychains instructions refer to id_dsa so I just changed it and it works OK.
When the script runs the first time it asks for the key password. Then it works from then on.
What I do not know yet is will I need to re-enter the password when I logoff/logon again. That will cause an issue as I auto restart the Mac every day which means if I am off for a few days backup will stop (can you see the madness in this issue!).

Need advice on running timer based cron jobs

Hi,
We made a cool desktop product on Flex that runs on the Air environment. After having released it a while ago, we think about taking its performance to the next level by being able to mimic cron job like functionality based on timers.
However, one of the setbacks for us while we tried to do something similar earlier was the Flash platform's single threaded architecture. So if we are running something resource consuming in the background, chances are that the UI might get stuck if a part of it is being rendered. That will make things looks ugly and we are trying to find ways to make it work.
Can anyone recommend anything that would help?
Thanks!
Vivek

> 1. What is the best fastest system AE can take advantage of? If we get 6 or 8 or 12 core Mac Pros (instead of the quad core) with more RAM, would AE be able to access that speed, and if so up to how many GB can it use, only up to 2GB per core or can it use more?
Yes, After Effects will take advantage of multiple fast CPUs and all of the RAM that you can install.
You also want to have a decent-sized SSD connected over a fast bus for the disk cache. The new Mac Pro does very well in that regard.
2. Should we replace the graphics card with an Nvidia CUDA? Is the ray-tracing engine something we’ll need with Cinema 4D work?
The After Effects ray-traced 3D renderer has nothing whatsoever to do with Cinema 4D.
Do not make any buying decisions based on the After Effects ray-traced 3D renderer unless you already know for certain that you have a need for it. Since you're asking, it seems that the answer is that you don't.
See this page for information about hardware for Premiere Pro and After Effects: http://adobe.ly/pRYOuk

Mount USB/Firewire drive from shell or cron job

Is there a way to mount a USB/Firewire drive from the shell or possibly mount it using a cron job? Here's the situation. I have a user that keeps all of her data on her desktop or in her Documents folder. I have attached a firewire drive to her PowerMac G5 (OS 10.4.6) and successfully created cron jobs to backup her entire user folder every night. The problem is that she logs off of her computer before she leaves work. When she logs of the firewire drive unmounts and the cron job fails because it cannot find the drive. I was hoping there was a way to mount the drive using a script so that it will mount, let the cron job run, and then possibly unmount the drive afterwards. Any help with this would be much appreciated.
MacMini, PowerMac G5, iMac Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Try adding the following line to the beginning of the job:
mount -a
You may need to add u and/or w to the command after the a without any additional spaces for the mount to work properly.
(13951)

Cron Job in Root Directory

I am running OS 10.4.6 on a Mac G4 450MHz machine. Recently when I opened Activity Monitor I noticed a cron job showed up in the root directory that hadn't been there before. I know I can select the cron job and then click on the Inspect icon but the dialogue boxes that show up do not tell me anything about the cron job except statistics having to do with CPU or memory usage. How do I find out what the cron job is and what it does? Is having a cron job in the root directory normal for 10.4.6? If it's not supposed to be there, how do I get rid of it?
Thanks for your help.
G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6) 450MHz with 768MB of RAM

David,
I think you are seeing the cron daemon. Not a "cron job". The cron daemon is started during the boot process. Cron then reads /etc/crontab. Crontab list "jobs" to be run and at what time. As of Tiger cron has been demoted and launchd handles running "jobs". Cron is still started at boot time but does nothing. It runs for backwards compatibility. There's nothing to get rid of- just leave it alone.

Cron job to start machine.

Is there a way to get the machine to start, open iTunes and start playing a song at a specified time using a cron job?
MacBook Pro 15.4" - Intel Core Duo 2.0 Mac OS X (10.4.6) 2GB RAM

I have my computer do exactly what you want yours to do, except I don't use a cron job. In case you don't actually need to use cron, I'll tell how I get it to happen.
As mentioned by Federico_82, I use the Energy Saver preferences in System Preferences. There is an "Schedule..." button in the lower right corner that will allow you set the startup and/or shutdown times for the computer. It's not very detailed, but it suits my purposes for waking up Monday through Friday.
I also have the computer automatically log me in using the Login Options in Accounts preferences in System Preferences.
Finally, I've set alarms in iCal and chose "Open file" in the alarm section of the Info drawer. You can select a song file (or anything really) to be opened and the song will be played with iTunes since songs should automatically open with iTunes.
I've also set the final option in the alarm section to perform this 5 minutes before the time I set for the event, with the event time being the same time as the computer startup. This is okay because it will perform an alarm that was suppose to happen even if it couldn't do it earlier, for example because the computer was off. So you don't have to worry about timing it perfectly. Just set the alarm time to the same as the startup time for the computer or earlier if you want it to happen immediately upon startup, then the alarm will go off immediately after computer turns on and logs you in.
Also keep in mind you can set the event to repeat at various intervals in iCal, such as Monday through Friday or various discontinuous days of the week every week, and so on. Very customizable.
Personally, I use an Automator app to start playing a playlist in iTunes, and to set the iTunes volume to an appropriate level to wake up with just in case I've change the volume the last time I used iTunes. In this way, I can simply change the song in the playlist in iTunes without having change the alarm event in iCal. This helps because then I can copy/paste the alarm anywhere I want and don't have to worry about finding another song file if I want to change the song. Instead, I simply find the song I want in iTunes and put it in the playlist, along with any other songs I want have played.
If you do it with an Automator workflow, simply save the workflow as an iCal Alarm with "Save As Plug-in...". It'll automatically save in your ~/Library/Workflows/Applications/iCal folder, without you having to figure that out. Oh, and it doesn't hurt to test the workflow to make sure it plays your playlist (or whatever you have it do) before saving it as an iCal Alarm. Though, you can re-edit later if you want.
Once you've saved your workflow as an iCal Alarm, it'll show up in list of files to open in the alarm section for the event. So, after you've chosen "Open file" in that section, the default for the file will be "iCal", but you'll also be able to choose any iCal alarms you've saved in Automator or any other file (such as a document or a song).
Just as a bit of trivia, a plug-in you save in Automator is actually the same thing as saving your workflow as an application. The only difference is that the app is saved to a specific location so the Finder, or iCal, or Image Capture, etc., can find it. So, you don't have to know where to save it, Automator does that for you, but I told you where it is anyways (though you could use Spotlight) so you can get to it to edit it again if you want. Just drag and drop the app onto Automator or open it from within Automator to edit it again.
I hope that helps. Though it might sound kind of complicated at first, I think this way is much easier than dealing with a crontab and trying to synchronize it with startup and so on. You'll also find this way very customizable with the various options for iCal alarms and the many possibilities with Automator (if you choose to use a workflow instead of simply a song file).

Cron jobs and crashes

I have a script that I wrote to backup a server at midnight every night. It uses rsync to perform the backup. The past two nights it has run it seems to cause the server to crash. I used the Terminal to setup a cron job to run the script. Does this sound like a serious error or am I doing something completely wrong, or should it maybe be done at a different time? I looked through the logs and the kernel seems to panic and call crashdump or panicdump.
The system in question is a Mac Mini if it makes any difference. If anyone would like I could post the script.
Tom

Here is the script file. I tried changing the time the script is run from midnight to 1AM and it ran the problem was that it ran about 60 times!!!!
Is this a problem with the cron job because I see no problems with my script. I can successfully run it from the command line.
#!/bin/bash
DIRS=(/Applications /Developer /Groups /Library "/Shared Items" /System /Users /bin /opt /private /sbin /sw /usr)
###### DON'T CHANGE BELOW HERE ######
LOGS_DIR="/Library/Logs/Backup"
MACHINE=`hostname -s`
RSYNC_FLAGS=" -avz -e ssh --eahfs --delete" # These shouldn't need changed
DATE=`date +%m%d%G`
RSYNC_BIN="/usr/local/bin/rsync"
if [ ! -d "$LOGS_DIR" ]; then
mkdir $LOGS_DIR
fi
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
echo "usage: $0 <daily|weekly>"
exit
fi
TYPE=$1
if [ "$TYPE" = "daily" ]; then
TYPE="Daily"
elif [ "$TYPE" = "weekly" ]; then
TYPE="Weekly"
else
echo "Bad Option please use daily or weekly"
exit
fi
BACKUP_DIR="146.186.147.152:/Volumes/Backups_${TYPE}/${MACHINE}/"
#echo "${RSYNC_BIN} ${RSYNC_FLAGS} "${DIRS[@]}" ${BACKUP_DIR} >& ${LOGS_DIR}/${TYPE}_${DATE}.log"
#${RSYNC_BIN} ${RSYNC_FLAGS} "${DIRS[@]}" ${BACKUP_DIR} >& ${LOGS_DIR}/${TYPE}_${DATE}.log
#echo "${RSYNC_BIN} ${RSYNC_FLAGS} "${DIRS[@]}" ${BACKUP_DIR}"
${RSYNC_BIN} ${RSYNC_FLAGS} "${DIRS[@]}" ${BACKUP_DIR}

How to take the cron job log in HP UX?

Hi,
How to take the cron job log in HP UX
I need to run a backup and other stuff everyday. How do I check and start cron service under HP-UX UNIX operating system? How do I write cron jobs?
A. Cron service is required to run jobs and tasks such as backup.
You must login as the root to run following commands. Each user that is using the cron service must have a cron configuration file in the /var/spool/cron/crontab directory. Also users are permitted if their name appeared in /var/adm/cron/cron.allow file
Task: Find out if cron is running under HP-UX
Type the following command at a shell prompt
# ps -ef | grep cron
Open /etc/rc.config.d/cron file
vi /etc/rc.config.d/cron
Set control variable to 1 to enable cron: CRON=1
Set control variable to 0 to disable: CRON=0
Close and save the file. To start or stop cron you can type the following command:
# /sbin/init.d/cron start <-- start cron
# /sbin/init.d/cron stop <-- stop cron
Task: HP-UX Start cron service
If cron is not running, simply type:
# cron
Task: Edit / create cron jobs
Type the following command to submit a cron job:
# crontab -e
List your cron file:
# crontab -l
Backup all your cron jobs:
# crontab -l > ~/backup.cron.jobs
Remove ALL cron job:
# crontab -r
Task: Crontab file format
Cron file format is as follows:
MIN HOUR DATE MONTH DAY /PATH/TO/COMMAND
0-59 0-23 1-31 1-12 0-6 /root/scripts/backup2tape.shEasy to remember crontab file format:
* * * * * command to be executed
| | | | |
| | | | ----- Day of week (0 - 7) (Sunday=0 or 7)
| | | ------- Month (1 - 12)
| | --------- Day of month (1 - 31)
| ----------- Hour (0 - 23)
------------- Minute (0 - 59)To run /root/script/backup at 23:00, every day, enter:
# crontab -e
Append following
0 23 * * * /root/script/backupRun foo job very weekday (MON-Fri) at 6am, enter:
0 6 * * 1-5 /root/script/backupFor more information refer to cron and crontab man pages.
Subscribe to our free e-mail newsletter or RSS feed to get all updates. You can Email this page to a friend.
Related Other Helpful FAQs:
What is Cron?
Linux Start and stop the cron or crond service
Run crontab Every 10 Minutes
Linux / UNIX Setup and run php script as a cron job
Stop Ubuntu / Debian Linux From Deleting /tmp Files on Boot
Discussion on This FAQDavid Says:
January 15th, 2008 at 12:21 am
You might note that all files normally found in /etc/init.d, /etc/rc*.d, and others are all in /sbin in HP-UX 10.20 and up.
Note too that your formatting is off in the description of the /etc/rc.config.d/cron file. Also, if you run /usr/bin/cron instead of /sbin/init.d/cron start, the /etc/rc.config.d/cron file is not used.
Regards,
Satya

I guess it would :)
btw, how did this piece miss from the contents pasted by the OP ?
The doc has given all details of CRON and missed where to see the logfiles. :)
****Added****
I tried man crontab in windows, i dont see it.i overlook most of the things, i would have done the same ;)
Edited by: Bobcatalog on Oct 23, 2008 9:40 AM

Need help with a cron job

What I want to do is run an Applescript every 6 hours and 1 minute. If the computer is asleep when the job comes due, I want it to execute the script and reset the counter. Can crontab do this? If so, how to set it up?

Gnarlodious wrote:
Then skip it, I can see there is no easy way.
I don't think it's that hard, though. Just a bit tricky. I was just a bit confused on what exactly you wanted.
I could write a stay-open Applescript application, but I wanted to avoid cluttering up the Dock just to run a command every 6 hours.
Nah, I wouldn't want that either.
If I were doing something like this and I wanted it to work like this:
1. Run every six hours, at 6 AM, noon, 6 PM, and midnight.
2. Run after waking up if the computer has been asleep and missed any of the times in between, say if you let the computer sleep thru the 6 AM job.
I'd do this:
1. Call the AppleScript periodically from a cron job. How often would be dependent on how tight you want the times to be to when you wake up.
2. Have the AppleScript save a text file somewhere with the time when it runs. That way, if your computer is asleep at 6 AM, the script could use this to decide if it missed running while it was asleep.
3. Have your script check this time and if it's over 6 hours, let the script do its thing. If not, then just exit, to try all this again the next time cron runs it.
Here's kind of a pseudo-code way of describing it:
check if it's 6:01, 12:01, 18:01, 00:01
if yes:
do your AppleScript business
save the current time in a file
exit
if it's not one of those times:
check if it's been over 6 hours since the AppleScript did its business
if yes:
do the AppleScript business
save the current time in a file
exit
if no:
exit
Then you could do two cron jobs:
1 */6 * * * /path/to/applescript
*/5 * * * * /path/to/applescript
The first one would run at your appointed times. The second would just run every 5 minutes to catch those times when the computer was asleep. The "5" could also be "10" for every ten minutes. Or whatever you decide you'd like.
I'd show you an AppleScript, but I'm really not so good at that. If a Perl script would help, I could whip one up pretty quickly, I think.
charlie

Is it possible to have a Cron job in CPO to check the running status of a workflow

Is it possible to have a Cron job in CPO to check every hour to see if a particular workflow is running, if not trigger it by creating a alert, if yes- autokill

Hi Warren,
We don't want our process to expire and also not to execute twice at once. We have a provisioning wrapper workflow which is triggered one time by an alert and it runs endlessly by creating an alert at the end of each instance triggering another instance of the same unless CPO hangs or goes to stand by mode. Since we belong to service team, we don't have any kind of access to CPO DB or logs, so that possibility is ruled out. Just checking for alternatives.

Cron job help- Need to run the Autobuddy command every night...

I have not written anything in the form of a Unix script for YEARS and YEARS. Our XServe was built in Advanced mode, currently running 10.5.4 Server. On this box, we are running Wiki and iChat. Since we built this box as an Advanced box the "Autobuddy" option was not available.
I have since enabled it at the command line, but I am told by Apple that there still needs to be a command run after every time a user logs in if you want others to Autobuddy. That command is this:
"sudo /usr/bin/jabber_autobuddy -m"
Now I think this would be pretty easy to setup as an automatic cron script, but like I said, I have not written something like this in forever. Not to mention, I am not 100% sure what needs to happen since running the script with an sudo command will prompt for the root password.
I was wondering if anyone would be able to help me write the script up, and give me some instructions on how to install it. I just want it run everyday, midnight is fine, I don't really care. All I know is that we have a dept of 150 people, and it grows and shrinks all the time. They can deal with a new user not being seen for 24-48 hours, I just want to get this automated.
Any helps would be GREATLY appreciated!
Thanks
Tom

If you want to keep it simple try [CronniX|http://www.abstracture.de/projects-en/cronnix] a graphical tool for setting up CRON jobs on OSX. Whilst I have not actually done an autobuuddy in this way, I cannot see any reason why it will not run as a Cron Job.
The proper way ideally would be to use the launchd service.
Something like this should work:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>org.jabber.dailyautobuddy</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/bin/jabber_autobuddy</string>
<string>-m</string>
</array>
<key>LowPriorityIO</key>
<true/>
<key><UserName></key>
<string>admin</string>
<key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
<dict>
<key>Hour</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>Minute</key>
<integer>05</integer>
</dict>
</dict>
</plist>
(not sure why, but tabs are not showing up, making this hard to read)
Message was edited by: Tim Harris

Schedule rman using cron job

I have scheduled a cron job to take rman backup of database everyday at 4PM. But I see that the empty backup.log file is getting generated while the script is not running. If I run the backup.sh script manually then the backup is running fine. The following are the scripts and the crontab details,
backup.sh script is as follows,
cd /u01/app/oracle/rmanbkp
rman target / <<EOF
run
allocate channel ch1 type disk format '/u01/app/oracle/rmanbkp/%d_%T_%s.bak';
backup database;
delete noprompt obsolete;
exit;
EOF
while the output of 'crontab -l' is
00 16 * * * /home/imsoracle/backup.sh > backup.log
Backup is not happening, what is wrong in my settings. Please advise.

Dear $ami Malik,
There is another option that you can use for RMAN scripting as shown below;
0 2 * * 2 export ORACLE_HOME=/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/ ;
/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/bin/rman cmdfile /db/optima/archive/OPTPROD/RMAN/backup_full.sh
log /db/optima/archive/OPTPROD/RMAN/backup_full.log
vals2:/home/oracle#cat /db/optima/archive/OPTPROD/RMAN/backup_full.sh
connect target sys/password@optprod
backup database format '/db/optima/archive/OPTPROD/backupset/DB_FULL_%d_%t_%s_%p';
backup archivelog all delete all input format '/db/optima/archive/OPTPROD/backupset/ARC_%d_%t_%s';
exit;So you can construct such backup strategy with the cmdfile and log options of the recovery manager.
Hope That Helps.
Ogan

How to Create Linux-Cron Job from a Java Program

Hello,
Can anybody help me to CREATE/EDIT/DELETE Linux Cron job from Java Program. Its Very Urgent.Thanks in advance..
from
Chakri

I decided this didn't sound too tough so I played around with it a little. Basically because I'd never tried executing external processes out of java before, so I wanted to see how it was done.
Just change whatever you like in the jobs ArrayList and call writeJobs.
If you call writeJobs without putting anything in the list first you'll wipe out all of your crontab entries.
import java.lang.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
public class cron {
    ArrayList jobs;
    Runtime rt;
    cron() {
     rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
     jobs = new ArrayList();
    void readCron() {
     String[] list = { "crontab", "-l" };
     jobs = new ArrayList();
     try {
         // Stick a job into crontab
         Process child = rt.exec(list);
         BufferedReader cronout = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(child.getInputStream()));
         String cronjob = cronout.readLine();
         while (cronjob != null) {
          jobs.add(cronjob);
          cronjob = cronout.readLine();
         child.waitFor();
     catch(IOException e) {
         System.err.println("IOException starting process!");
     catch(InterruptedException e) {
         System.err.println("Interrupted waiting for process!");
    void listJobs() {
     Iterator iter = jobs.iterator();
     while (iter.hasNext()) {
         System.out.println((String)iter.next());
    void writeJobs() {
     String[] edit = { "crontab"};
     try {
         // Stick a job into crontab
         Process child = rt.exec(edit);
         PrintWriter cronIn = new PrintWriter(child.getOutputStream());
         Iterator iter = jobs.iterator();
         while (iter.hasNext()) {
          cronIn.println((String)iter.next());
         cronIn.close();
         child.waitFor();
     catch(IOException e) {
         System.err.println("IOException starting process!");
     catch(InterruptedException e) {
         System.err.println("Interrupted waiting for process!");
    void doStuff() {
     readCron();
     listJobs();
     jobs.add("* * * * 4 cronjob");
     writeJobs();
     readCron();
     listJobs();
    public static void main(String[] args) {
     cron c = new cron();
     c.doStuff();
}

DBA scripts run by cron job

We've got a development database on which we're working every day. We intend to set up a cron job to run about once a week to help in the maintainance & performance of the database.... analyzing tables, stuff like that. Does anybody have any suggestions as to what scripts it's useful to run to help keep things running smoothly?
We're using 9.0.1
Cheers
RT

We've got a development database on which we're working every day. We intend to set up a cron job to run about once a week to help in the maintainance & performance of the database.... analyzing tables, stuff like that. Does anybody have any suggestions as to what scripts it's useful to run to help keep things running smoothly?
We're using 9.0.1
Cheers
RT i'd suggest you try out oracle enterprise manager and look at the list of events you can test for. You can use this list to implement in cron or let OEM do it for you. You'll find test like, is the listener up, is the db up, is the server up, what tablespaces will not be able to extend, if a disk is getting fulletc and stuff like that . Those items should help you frame your scripts for cron if you like.

Fail to save a Cron job (SOLVED)

I can't save a new cron job in my system. I use
crontab -e
or
export VISUAL=gedit && crontab -e
to add a new job. These commands open a /tmp/crontab.XXXX file that after saving, cron jobs are NOT updated!
It's too strange to me* !
I run
nano -w /var/spool/cron/root
and the cron job is listed now by
crontab -l
Why I can't save cron jobs directly from crontab -e?
( I have read the vi man pages :-) )
* I am newbie, just one month Linux user with 3 distro succesfully installed

osigen wrote:Ooops! VI is complicated editor.
Thanks anyway!
Its a great editor once you learn to use it
here's some usesfull documentation on the commands:
http://www.fprintf.net/vimCheatSheet.html

CRON job on mac

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