Subj : BBS question
To   : Richard Falken
From : Alan Ianson
Date : Sun Dec 15 2019 10:25 am

Hello Richard,

 >> I have never done that and don't know if it's possible. Cron is
 >> meant to run commands unattended so they are not seen.

 RF> It has been some time since I last did something of this sort, but you
 RF> should set the proper DISPLAY variable in cron and authorize the cron
 RF> user to use that display.

I have never done that. It might be possible, I wouldn't know.

 RF> I think you can do it, but it sounds very fragile to me. Plus, if you
 RF> don't have a working display by the time cron triggers, it all will
 RF> crash.

There is nothing fragile about cron. It just gets stuff done on schedule. There
 is no way (that I know off) to see what cron is doing but it will go ahead and
 do what you tell it to do, when you tell it to do it.

 RF> If invoking the scripts from a graphical interface was a must, I would
 RF> forget about cron and use my desktop environment to load a while loop
 RF> that called the commands periodically.

Yes, if you want to see some kind of output cron is not the way.

 Ttyl :-),
         Al

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