crontab's @reboot only works for root?
man 5 crontab
is pretty clear on how to use crontab to run a script on boot:
These special time specification "nicknames" are supported, which replace the 5 initial time and date
fields, and are prefixed by the `@` character:
@reboot : Run once after reboot.
So I happily added a single line to my crontab (under my user account, not root):
@reboot /home/me/myscript.sh
But for some reason, myscript.sh wouldn't run on machine reboot.
(it runs fine if I invoke it from the command line, so it's not a permissions problem)
What am I missing?
Update to answer @Anthon's questions:
- Oracle-linux version: 5.8 (uname: 2.6.32-300.39.2.el5uek #1 SMP)
- Cron version: vixie-cron-4.1-81.el5.x86_64
- Yes,
/home
is a mounted partition. Looks like this is the problem. How do I workaround this? - Currently,
myscript.sh
only echos a text message to a file in/home/me
.
cron reboot
|
show 9 more comments
man 5 crontab
is pretty clear on how to use crontab to run a script on boot:
These special time specification "nicknames" are supported, which replace the 5 initial time and date
fields, and are prefixed by the `@` character:
@reboot : Run once after reboot.
So I happily added a single line to my crontab (under my user account, not root):
@reboot /home/me/myscript.sh
But for some reason, myscript.sh wouldn't run on machine reboot.
(it runs fine if I invoke it from the command line, so it's not a permissions problem)
What am I missing?
Update to answer @Anthon's questions:
- Oracle-linux version: 5.8 (uname: 2.6.32-300.39.2.el5uek #1 SMP)
- Cron version: vixie-cron-4.1-81.el5.x86_64
- Yes,
/home
is a mounted partition. Looks like this is the problem. How do I workaround this? - Currently,
myscript.sh
only echos a text message to a file in/home/me
.
cron reboot
2
your user crontab does not support @reboot option, there are a few crontab layouts, once you start poking around.
– X Tian
Jan 17 '14 at 18:20
@XTian Thanks. What is the recommended way to run a script on reboot as a user other than root?
– Withheld
Jan 17 '14 at 18:38
2
What you are missing is unclear, but what we are missing is details. What version of oracle-linux are you running? Which version of cron do you have? Is/home
a mounted partition? What are the contents of your/home/me/myscript.sh
?
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 5:47
1
If you're using Oracle's Lin. ver. 5 there is this changelog about issues with vixie-cron +@reboot
. oss.oracle.com/pipermail/el-errata/2012-March/002655.html
– slm♦
Jan 18 '14 at 6:08
1
@Daniel - ismyscript.sh
executable?chmod +x myscript.sh
.
– slm♦
Jan 24 '14 at 12:51
|
show 9 more comments
man 5 crontab
is pretty clear on how to use crontab to run a script on boot:
These special time specification "nicknames" are supported, which replace the 5 initial time and date
fields, and are prefixed by the `@` character:
@reboot : Run once after reboot.
So I happily added a single line to my crontab (under my user account, not root):
@reboot /home/me/myscript.sh
But for some reason, myscript.sh wouldn't run on machine reboot.
(it runs fine if I invoke it from the command line, so it's not a permissions problem)
What am I missing?
Update to answer @Anthon's questions:
- Oracle-linux version: 5.8 (uname: 2.6.32-300.39.2.el5uek #1 SMP)
- Cron version: vixie-cron-4.1-81.el5.x86_64
- Yes,
/home
is a mounted partition. Looks like this is the problem. How do I workaround this? - Currently,
myscript.sh
only echos a text message to a file in/home/me
.
cron reboot
man 5 crontab
is pretty clear on how to use crontab to run a script on boot:
These special time specification "nicknames" are supported, which replace the 5 initial time and date
fields, and are prefixed by the `@` character:
@reboot : Run once after reboot.
So I happily added a single line to my crontab (under my user account, not root):
@reboot /home/me/myscript.sh
But for some reason, myscript.sh wouldn't run on machine reboot.
(it runs fine if I invoke it from the command line, so it's not a permissions problem)
What am I missing?
Update to answer @Anthon's questions:
- Oracle-linux version: 5.8 (uname: 2.6.32-300.39.2.el5uek #1 SMP)
- Cron version: vixie-cron-4.1-81.el5.x86_64
- Yes,
/home
is a mounted partition. Looks like this is the problem. How do I workaround this? - Currently,
myscript.sh
only echos a text message to a file in/home/me
.
cron reboot
cron reboot
edited Sep 10 '14 at 1:41
Braiam
23.7k2077142
23.7k2077142
asked Jan 17 '14 at 17:56
WithheldWithheld
403146
403146
2
your user crontab does not support @reboot option, there are a few crontab layouts, once you start poking around.
– X Tian
Jan 17 '14 at 18:20
@XTian Thanks. What is the recommended way to run a script on reboot as a user other than root?
– Withheld
Jan 17 '14 at 18:38
2
What you are missing is unclear, but what we are missing is details. What version of oracle-linux are you running? Which version of cron do you have? Is/home
a mounted partition? What are the contents of your/home/me/myscript.sh
?
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 5:47
1
If you're using Oracle's Lin. ver. 5 there is this changelog about issues with vixie-cron +@reboot
. oss.oracle.com/pipermail/el-errata/2012-March/002655.html
– slm♦
Jan 18 '14 at 6:08
1
@Daniel - ismyscript.sh
executable?chmod +x myscript.sh
.
– slm♦
Jan 24 '14 at 12:51
|
show 9 more comments
2
your user crontab does not support @reboot option, there are a few crontab layouts, once you start poking around.
– X Tian
Jan 17 '14 at 18:20
@XTian Thanks. What is the recommended way to run a script on reboot as a user other than root?
– Withheld
Jan 17 '14 at 18:38
2
What you are missing is unclear, but what we are missing is details. What version of oracle-linux are you running? Which version of cron do you have? Is/home
a mounted partition? What are the contents of your/home/me/myscript.sh
?
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 5:47
1
If you're using Oracle's Lin. ver. 5 there is this changelog about issues with vixie-cron +@reboot
. oss.oracle.com/pipermail/el-errata/2012-March/002655.html
– slm♦
Jan 18 '14 at 6:08
1
@Daniel - ismyscript.sh
executable?chmod +x myscript.sh
.
– slm♦
Jan 24 '14 at 12:51
2
2
your user crontab does not support @reboot option, there are a few crontab layouts, once you start poking around.
– X Tian
Jan 17 '14 at 18:20
your user crontab does not support @reboot option, there are a few crontab layouts, once you start poking around.
– X Tian
Jan 17 '14 at 18:20
@XTian Thanks. What is the recommended way to run a script on reboot as a user other than root?
– Withheld
Jan 17 '14 at 18:38
@XTian Thanks. What is the recommended way to run a script on reboot as a user other than root?
– Withheld
Jan 17 '14 at 18:38
2
2
What you are missing is unclear, but what we are missing is details. What version of oracle-linux are you running? Which version of cron do you have? Is
/home
a mounted partition? What are the contents of your /home/me/myscript.sh
?– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 5:47
What you are missing is unclear, but what we are missing is details. What version of oracle-linux are you running? Which version of cron do you have? Is
/home
a mounted partition? What are the contents of your /home/me/myscript.sh
?– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 5:47
1
1
If you're using Oracle's Lin. ver. 5 there is this changelog about issues with vixie-cron +
@reboot
. oss.oracle.com/pipermail/el-errata/2012-March/002655.html– slm♦
Jan 18 '14 at 6:08
If you're using Oracle's Lin. ver. 5 there is this changelog about issues with vixie-cron +
@reboot
. oss.oracle.com/pipermail/el-errata/2012-March/002655.html– slm♦
Jan 18 '14 at 6:08
1
1
@Daniel - is
myscript.sh
executable? chmod +x myscript.sh
.– slm♦
Jan 24 '14 at 12:51
@Daniel - is
myscript.sh
executable? chmod +x myscript.sh
.– slm♦
Jan 24 '14 at 12:51
|
show 9 more comments
7 Answers
7
active
oldest
votes
This can be a bit of a confusing topic because there are different implementations of cron. Also there were several bugs that broke this feature, and there are also some use cases where it simply won't work, specifically if you do a shutdown/boot vs. a reboot.
Bugs
datapoint #1
One such bug in Debian is covered here, titled: cron: @reboot jobs are not run. This seems to have made it's way into Ubuntu as well, which I can't confirm directly.
datapoint #2
Evidence of the bug in Ubuntu would seem to be confirmed here in this SO Q&A titled: @reboot cronjob not executing.
excerpt
comment #1: .... 3) your version of crond may not support @reboot are you using vix's crond? ... show results of crontab -l -u user
comment #2: ... It might be a good idea to set it up as an init script instead of relying on a specific version of cron's @reboot.
comment #3: ... @MarkRoberts removed the reboot and modified the 1 * * * * , to */1 * * * * , problem is solved! Where do I send the rep pts Mark? Thank you!
The accepted answer in that Q&A also had this comment:
Seems to me Lubuntu doesn't support the @Reboot Cron syntax.
Additional evidence
datapoint #3
As additional evidence there was this thread that someone was attempting the very same thing and getting frustrated that it didn't work. It's titled: Thread: Cron - @reboot jobs not working.
excerpt
Re: Cron - @reboot jobs not working
Quote Originally Posted by ceallred View Post
This is killing me... Tried the wrapper script. Running manually generates the log file... rebooting and the job doesn't run or create log file.
Syslog shows that CRON ran the job... but again, no output and the process isn't running.
Jul 15 20:07:45 RavenWing cron[1026]: (CRON) INFO (Running @reboot jobs)
Jul 15 20:07:45 RavenWing CRON[1053]: (ceallred) CMD (/home/ceallred/Scripts/run_spideroak.sh > /home/ceallred/Scripts/SpiderOak.log 2>&1 &)
It's seems like cron doesn't like the @reboot command.... Any other ideas?
Okay... Partially solved. I'll mark this one as solved and start a new thread with the new issue.....
I think the answer was my encrypted home directory wasn't mounted when CRON was trying to run the script (stored in /home/username/scripts). Moved to /usr/scripts and the job runs as expected.
So now it appears to be a spideroak issue. Process starts, but by the time the boot process is finished, it's gone. I'm guessing a crash for some reason.... New thread to ask about that.
Thanks for all the help!
Once this above user figured out his issue he was able to get @reboot
working out of the crontab entry of a user.
I'm not entirely sure what version of cron is used on Ubuntu, but this would seem to indicate that user's can use @reboot
too, or that the bug was fixed at some point in subsequent versions of cron.
datapoint #4
I tested on CentOS 6 the following and it worked.
Example
$ crontab -l
@reboot echo "hi" > /home/sam/reboot.txt 2>&1
I then rebooted the system.
$ sudo reboot
After the reboot.
$ cat reboot.txt
hi
Take aways
- This feature does seem to be supported for both system and user crontab entries.
- You have to make sure that it's supported/working in your particular distro and/or version of the cron package.
For more on how the actual mechanism works for @reboot
I did come across this blog post which discusses the innards. It's titled: @reboot - explaining simple cron magic.
Debugging crond
You can turn up the verbosity of crond
by adding the following to this configuration file on RHEL/CentOS/Fedora based distros.
$ more crond
# Settings for the CRON daemon.
# CRONDARGS= : any extra command-line startup arguments for crond
CRONDARGS="-L 2"
The valid levels are 0, 1, or 2. To revert this file back to it's default logging level simply remove the "-L 2"
when you're done debugging the situation.
@Daniel - please take a peek at my updates. There is a lot more to the@reboot
feature than I initially let on.
– slm♦
Jan 17 '14 at 19:31
Got a comment yesterday, looked at your answer and decided to answer myself after a good night sleep. Set up a VM, retried @reboot, wanted to post my answer and only then saw you 'reworded' your answer :-(
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 5:55
@Anthon - sorry, I quickly answered it yesterday and then continued to research it and found very conflicting details. When I found the bug on Debian about it and Ubuntu SO I realized some of what was at play. I saw that it worked on CentOS and put it together that@reboot
is OK in certain crons, and apparently buggy/broken in others. Hence the confusion.
– slm♦
Jan 18 '14 at 6:01
Apart from that the OP provides little detail, you can easily use something that does not work yet (at boot time) in your script that make it fail, or have it reside on a not-yet-mounted disc. My answer which the OP commented on, was confirmed by a 3rd party as well. It is the black swan problem...
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 6:07
3
You might want to point out that the bug in Ubuntu is easily solved by adding a delay:@reboot sleep 60; <your command>
. To quote the thread, "my guess is that cron's @reboot directive is running too early in the boot process"
– pzkpfw
Feb 19 '15 at 21:30
|
show 1 more comment
I found out that on my Ubuntu machine, I do not have access to dns services, yet, at @reboot time. This prevented me from mounting remote volumes. This corny, yet simple, solution worked:
@reboot sleep 60 && /home/me/bin/mount.sh 2>&1 >> /home/me/reboot.log
(in root cron; last parts only for debugging)
This is the only thing that actually works on ubuntu 16.04 for non-root users!
– Aleksandar Pavić
Apr 18 '17 at 13:56
Not working on Debian 8 jessie (gnome 3). :(
– JedatKinports
Apr 29 '17 at 16:25
add a comment |
I have mac osx as well and I had same issue where my script were not running. but When i fixed my script to like
@reboot cd /home/me/ && sh myscript.sh
it worked fine for me. make sure to make your shell file to be executable by running the command
chmod +x myscript.sh
hope these helps.
add a comment |
Take a fresh install of Ubuntu Gnome 13.10 (default user in my case: avanderneut).
avanderneut@uggo:~$ crontab -l
no crontab for avanderneut
avanderneut@uggo:~$ crontab -e
no crontab for avanderneut - using an empty one
Select an editor. To change later, run 'select-editor'.
1. /bin/ed
2. /bin/nano <---- easiest
3. /usr/bin/vim.tiny
Choose 1-3 [2]: 3
crontab: installing new crontab
avanderneut@uggo:~$ crontab -l | tail -2
# m h dom mon dow command
@reboot /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ vi /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ more !$
more /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
#! /bin/bash
echo "Reboot script" > /var/tmp/xxx
avanderneut@uggo:~$ chmod 755 /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ ls /var/tmp
avanderneut@uggo:~$ /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ ls /var/tmp
xxx
avanderneut@uggo:~$ rm /var/tmp/xxx
avanderneut@uggo:~$ sudo reboot
[sudo] password for avanderneut:
And see that after reboot the file /var/tmp/xxx
is there although it was not there before rebooting.
This was done with cron version 3.0.
You have to make sure that no services discs etc are used that might not be available at the time the script runs. Start with something simple like the above and make sure it has no terminal output as email is probably not up and running.
You might aslo need a more up-to-date cron (or an upgrade from oracle-linux) if this did not work for you and you need this feature.
I updated my OP to answer your questions. Turns out your suspicion was right from the start: The script to-be-run on reboot resides on a mountable/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol01
partition.
– Withheld
Jan 24 '14 at 12:56
@Daniel Thanks for letting me know, I'm glad you found the culprit. I am not sure if you can delay the start of cron until the partitions are mounted, some of that startup is done in parallel and you would have to change dependencies. I would not want to mess with that and possible breakcron
. You should IMHO take a different route than crontab & @reboot to run something once on startup as the user.
– Anthon
Jan 24 '14 at 13:15
add a comment |
I don't know if you have already solved this, or if any of the above was the solution you needed, but another possibility is:
if you have your /home directory encrypted, it may not be available until you log in, i.e. it is not available at reboot.
in this scenario, you could move your scripts to another location like /srv or /opt or /usr/local/bin/ etc.
add a comment |
I would say yes for the question. Just had difficulties with running cron on reboot (Debian 3.10.70) and managed to solve with:
@reboot root /usr/bin/python3 /path/to/script
And a newline character 'n' in the end
This is the contents of file:
/etc/cron.d/runOnReboot
Finally, I think it is worth noting an abstract from man 5 crontab
...
The format of a cron command is very much the V7 standard, with a number of upward-compatible extensions. Each line has five time and date
fields, followed by a command, followed by a newline character ('n'). The system crontab (/etc/crontab) uses the same format, except that the
username for the command is specified after the time and date fields and before the command. The fields may be separated by spaces or tabs. The
maximum permitted length for the command field is 998 characters.
...
add a comment |
prueba:
usuario@ubuntu:~$ touch script.sh
usuario@ubuntu:~$ chmod +x script.sh
usuario@ubuntu:~$ $crontrab -e
@reboot /home/usuario/script.sh
save and restart your pc
add a comment |
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7 Answers
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7 Answers
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oldest
votes
This can be a bit of a confusing topic because there are different implementations of cron. Also there were several bugs that broke this feature, and there are also some use cases where it simply won't work, specifically if you do a shutdown/boot vs. a reboot.
Bugs
datapoint #1
One such bug in Debian is covered here, titled: cron: @reboot jobs are not run. This seems to have made it's way into Ubuntu as well, which I can't confirm directly.
datapoint #2
Evidence of the bug in Ubuntu would seem to be confirmed here in this SO Q&A titled: @reboot cronjob not executing.
excerpt
comment #1: .... 3) your version of crond may not support @reboot are you using vix's crond? ... show results of crontab -l -u user
comment #2: ... It might be a good idea to set it up as an init script instead of relying on a specific version of cron's @reboot.
comment #3: ... @MarkRoberts removed the reboot and modified the 1 * * * * , to */1 * * * * , problem is solved! Where do I send the rep pts Mark? Thank you!
The accepted answer in that Q&A also had this comment:
Seems to me Lubuntu doesn't support the @Reboot Cron syntax.
Additional evidence
datapoint #3
As additional evidence there was this thread that someone was attempting the very same thing and getting frustrated that it didn't work. It's titled: Thread: Cron - @reboot jobs not working.
excerpt
Re: Cron - @reboot jobs not working
Quote Originally Posted by ceallred View Post
This is killing me... Tried the wrapper script. Running manually generates the log file... rebooting and the job doesn't run or create log file.
Syslog shows that CRON ran the job... but again, no output and the process isn't running.
Jul 15 20:07:45 RavenWing cron[1026]: (CRON) INFO (Running @reboot jobs)
Jul 15 20:07:45 RavenWing CRON[1053]: (ceallred) CMD (/home/ceallred/Scripts/run_spideroak.sh > /home/ceallred/Scripts/SpiderOak.log 2>&1 &)
It's seems like cron doesn't like the @reboot command.... Any other ideas?
Okay... Partially solved. I'll mark this one as solved and start a new thread with the new issue.....
I think the answer was my encrypted home directory wasn't mounted when CRON was trying to run the script (stored in /home/username/scripts). Moved to /usr/scripts and the job runs as expected.
So now it appears to be a spideroak issue. Process starts, but by the time the boot process is finished, it's gone. I'm guessing a crash for some reason.... New thread to ask about that.
Thanks for all the help!
Once this above user figured out his issue he was able to get @reboot
working out of the crontab entry of a user.
I'm not entirely sure what version of cron is used on Ubuntu, but this would seem to indicate that user's can use @reboot
too, or that the bug was fixed at some point in subsequent versions of cron.
datapoint #4
I tested on CentOS 6 the following and it worked.
Example
$ crontab -l
@reboot echo "hi" > /home/sam/reboot.txt 2>&1
I then rebooted the system.
$ sudo reboot
After the reboot.
$ cat reboot.txt
hi
Take aways
- This feature does seem to be supported for both system and user crontab entries.
- You have to make sure that it's supported/working in your particular distro and/or version of the cron package.
For more on how the actual mechanism works for @reboot
I did come across this blog post which discusses the innards. It's titled: @reboot - explaining simple cron magic.
Debugging crond
You can turn up the verbosity of crond
by adding the following to this configuration file on RHEL/CentOS/Fedora based distros.
$ more crond
# Settings for the CRON daemon.
# CRONDARGS= : any extra command-line startup arguments for crond
CRONDARGS="-L 2"
The valid levels are 0, 1, or 2. To revert this file back to it's default logging level simply remove the "-L 2"
when you're done debugging the situation.
@Daniel - please take a peek at my updates. There is a lot more to the@reboot
feature than I initially let on.
– slm♦
Jan 17 '14 at 19:31
Got a comment yesterday, looked at your answer and decided to answer myself after a good night sleep. Set up a VM, retried @reboot, wanted to post my answer and only then saw you 'reworded' your answer :-(
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 5:55
@Anthon - sorry, I quickly answered it yesterday and then continued to research it and found very conflicting details. When I found the bug on Debian about it and Ubuntu SO I realized some of what was at play. I saw that it worked on CentOS and put it together that@reboot
is OK in certain crons, and apparently buggy/broken in others. Hence the confusion.
– slm♦
Jan 18 '14 at 6:01
Apart from that the OP provides little detail, you can easily use something that does not work yet (at boot time) in your script that make it fail, or have it reside on a not-yet-mounted disc. My answer which the OP commented on, was confirmed by a 3rd party as well. It is the black swan problem...
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 6:07
3
You might want to point out that the bug in Ubuntu is easily solved by adding a delay:@reboot sleep 60; <your command>
. To quote the thread, "my guess is that cron's @reboot directive is running too early in the boot process"
– pzkpfw
Feb 19 '15 at 21:30
|
show 1 more comment
This can be a bit of a confusing topic because there are different implementations of cron. Also there were several bugs that broke this feature, and there are also some use cases where it simply won't work, specifically if you do a shutdown/boot vs. a reboot.
Bugs
datapoint #1
One such bug in Debian is covered here, titled: cron: @reboot jobs are not run. This seems to have made it's way into Ubuntu as well, which I can't confirm directly.
datapoint #2
Evidence of the bug in Ubuntu would seem to be confirmed here in this SO Q&A titled: @reboot cronjob not executing.
excerpt
comment #1: .... 3) your version of crond may not support @reboot are you using vix's crond? ... show results of crontab -l -u user
comment #2: ... It might be a good idea to set it up as an init script instead of relying on a specific version of cron's @reboot.
comment #3: ... @MarkRoberts removed the reboot and modified the 1 * * * * , to */1 * * * * , problem is solved! Where do I send the rep pts Mark? Thank you!
The accepted answer in that Q&A also had this comment:
Seems to me Lubuntu doesn't support the @Reboot Cron syntax.
Additional evidence
datapoint #3
As additional evidence there was this thread that someone was attempting the very same thing and getting frustrated that it didn't work. It's titled: Thread: Cron - @reboot jobs not working.
excerpt
Re: Cron - @reboot jobs not working
Quote Originally Posted by ceallred View Post
This is killing me... Tried the wrapper script. Running manually generates the log file... rebooting and the job doesn't run or create log file.
Syslog shows that CRON ran the job... but again, no output and the process isn't running.
Jul 15 20:07:45 RavenWing cron[1026]: (CRON) INFO (Running @reboot jobs)
Jul 15 20:07:45 RavenWing CRON[1053]: (ceallred) CMD (/home/ceallred/Scripts/run_spideroak.sh > /home/ceallred/Scripts/SpiderOak.log 2>&1 &)
It's seems like cron doesn't like the @reboot command.... Any other ideas?
Okay... Partially solved. I'll mark this one as solved and start a new thread with the new issue.....
I think the answer was my encrypted home directory wasn't mounted when CRON was trying to run the script (stored in /home/username/scripts). Moved to /usr/scripts and the job runs as expected.
So now it appears to be a spideroak issue. Process starts, but by the time the boot process is finished, it's gone. I'm guessing a crash for some reason.... New thread to ask about that.
Thanks for all the help!
Once this above user figured out his issue he was able to get @reboot
working out of the crontab entry of a user.
I'm not entirely sure what version of cron is used on Ubuntu, but this would seem to indicate that user's can use @reboot
too, or that the bug was fixed at some point in subsequent versions of cron.
datapoint #4
I tested on CentOS 6 the following and it worked.
Example
$ crontab -l
@reboot echo "hi" > /home/sam/reboot.txt 2>&1
I then rebooted the system.
$ sudo reboot
After the reboot.
$ cat reboot.txt
hi
Take aways
- This feature does seem to be supported for both system and user crontab entries.
- You have to make sure that it's supported/working in your particular distro and/or version of the cron package.
For more on how the actual mechanism works for @reboot
I did come across this blog post which discusses the innards. It's titled: @reboot - explaining simple cron magic.
Debugging crond
You can turn up the verbosity of crond
by adding the following to this configuration file on RHEL/CentOS/Fedora based distros.
$ more crond
# Settings for the CRON daemon.
# CRONDARGS= : any extra command-line startup arguments for crond
CRONDARGS="-L 2"
The valid levels are 0, 1, or 2. To revert this file back to it's default logging level simply remove the "-L 2"
when you're done debugging the situation.
@Daniel - please take a peek at my updates. There is a lot more to the@reboot
feature than I initially let on.
– slm♦
Jan 17 '14 at 19:31
Got a comment yesterday, looked at your answer and decided to answer myself after a good night sleep. Set up a VM, retried @reboot, wanted to post my answer and only then saw you 'reworded' your answer :-(
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 5:55
@Anthon - sorry, I quickly answered it yesterday and then continued to research it and found very conflicting details. When I found the bug on Debian about it and Ubuntu SO I realized some of what was at play. I saw that it worked on CentOS and put it together that@reboot
is OK in certain crons, and apparently buggy/broken in others. Hence the confusion.
– slm♦
Jan 18 '14 at 6:01
Apart from that the OP provides little detail, you can easily use something that does not work yet (at boot time) in your script that make it fail, or have it reside on a not-yet-mounted disc. My answer which the OP commented on, was confirmed by a 3rd party as well. It is the black swan problem...
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 6:07
3
You might want to point out that the bug in Ubuntu is easily solved by adding a delay:@reboot sleep 60; <your command>
. To quote the thread, "my guess is that cron's @reboot directive is running too early in the boot process"
– pzkpfw
Feb 19 '15 at 21:30
|
show 1 more comment
This can be a bit of a confusing topic because there are different implementations of cron. Also there were several bugs that broke this feature, and there are also some use cases where it simply won't work, specifically if you do a shutdown/boot vs. a reboot.
Bugs
datapoint #1
One such bug in Debian is covered here, titled: cron: @reboot jobs are not run. This seems to have made it's way into Ubuntu as well, which I can't confirm directly.
datapoint #2
Evidence of the bug in Ubuntu would seem to be confirmed here in this SO Q&A titled: @reboot cronjob not executing.
excerpt
comment #1: .... 3) your version of crond may not support @reboot are you using vix's crond? ... show results of crontab -l -u user
comment #2: ... It might be a good idea to set it up as an init script instead of relying on a specific version of cron's @reboot.
comment #3: ... @MarkRoberts removed the reboot and modified the 1 * * * * , to */1 * * * * , problem is solved! Where do I send the rep pts Mark? Thank you!
The accepted answer in that Q&A also had this comment:
Seems to me Lubuntu doesn't support the @Reboot Cron syntax.
Additional evidence
datapoint #3
As additional evidence there was this thread that someone was attempting the very same thing and getting frustrated that it didn't work. It's titled: Thread: Cron - @reboot jobs not working.
excerpt
Re: Cron - @reboot jobs not working
Quote Originally Posted by ceallred View Post
This is killing me... Tried the wrapper script. Running manually generates the log file... rebooting and the job doesn't run or create log file.
Syslog shows that CRON ran the job... but again, no output and the process isn't running.
Jul 15 20:07:45 RavenWing cron[1026]: (CRON) INFO (Running @reboot jobs)
Jul 15 20:07:45 RavenWing CRON[1053]: (ceallred) CMD (/home/ceallred/Scripts/run_spideroak.sh > /home/ceallred/Scripts/SpiderOak.log 2>&1 &)
It's seems like cron doesn't like the @reboot command.... Any other ideas?
Okay... Partially solved. I'll mark this one as solved and start a new thread with the new issue.....
I think the answer was my encrypted home directory wasn't mounted when CRON was trying to run the script (stored in /home/username/scripts). Moved to /usr/scripts and the job runs as expected.
So now it appears to be a spideroak issue. Process starts, but by the time the boot process is finished, it's gone. I'm guessing a crash for some reason.... New thread to ask about that.
Thanks for all the help!
Once this above user figured out his issue he was able to get @reboot
working out of the crontab entry of a user.
I'm not entirely sure what version of cron is used on Ubuntu, but this would seem to indicate that user's can use @reboot
too, or that the bug was fixed at some point in subsequent versions of cron.
datapoint #4
I tested on CentOS 6 the following and it worked.
Example
$ crontab -l
@reboot echo "hi" > /home/sam/reboot.txt 2>&1
I then rebooted the system.
$ sudo reboot
After the reboot.
$ cat reboot.txt
hi
Take aways
- This feature does seem to be supported for both system and user crontab entries.
- You have to make sure that it's supported/working in your particular distro and/or version of the cron package.
For more on how the actual mechanism works for @reboot
I did come across this blog post which discusses the innards. It's titled: @reboot - explaining simple cron magic.
Debugging crond
You can turn up the verbosity of crond
by adding the following to this configuration file on RHEL/CentOS/Fedora based distros.
$ more crond
# Settings for the CRON daemon.
# CRONDARGS= : any extra command-line startup arguments for crond
CRONDARGS="-L 2"
The valid levels are 0, 1, or 2. To revert this file back to it's default logging level simply remove the "-L 2"
when you're done debugging the situation.
This can be a bit of a confusing topic because there are different implementations of cron. Also there were several bugs that broke this feature, and there are also some use cases where it simply won't work, specifically if you do a shutdown/boot vs. a reboot.
Bugs
datapoint #1
One such bug in Debian is covered here, titled: cron: @reboot jobs are not run. This seems to have made it's way into Ubuntu as well, which I can't confirm directly.
datapoint #2
Evidence of the bug in Ubuntu would seem to be confirmed here in this SO Q&A titled: @reboot cronjob not executing.
excerpt
comment #1: .... 3) your version of crond may not support @reboot are you using vix's crond? ... show results of crontab -l -u user
comment #2: ... It might be a good idea to set it up as an init script instead of relying on a specific version of cron's @reboot.
comment #3: ... @MarkRoberts removed the reboot and modified the 1 * * * * , to */1 * * * * , problem is solved! Where do I send the rep pts Mark? Thank you!
The accepted answer in that Q&A also had this comment:
Seems to me Lubuntu doesn't support the @Reboot Cron syntax.
Additional evidence
datapoint #3
As additional evidence there was this thread that someone was attempting the very same thing and getting frustrated that it didn't work. It's titled: Thread: Cron - @reboot jobs not working.
excerpt
Re: Cron - @reboot jobs not working
Quote Originally Posted by ceallred View Post
This is killing me... Tried the wrapper script. Running manually generates the log file... rebooting and the job doesn't run or create log file.
Syslog shows that CRON ran the job... but again, no output and the process isn't running.
Jul 15 20:07:45 RavenWing cron[1026]: (CRON) INFO (Running @reboot jobs)
Jul 15 20:07:45 RavenWing CRON[1053]: (ceallred) CMD (/home/ceallred/Scripts/run_spideroak.sh > /home/ceallred/Scripts/SpiderOak.log 2>&1 &)
It's seems like cron doesn't like the @reboot command.... Any other ideas?
Okay... Partially solved. I'll mark this one as solved and start a new thread with the new issue.....
I think the answer was my encrypted home directory wasn't mounted when CRON was trying to run the script (stored in /home/username/scripts). Moved to /usr/scripts and the job runs as expected.
So now it appears to be a spideroak issue. Process starts, but by the time the boot process is finished, it's gone. I'm guessing a crash for some reason.... New thread to ask about that.
Thanks for all the help!
Once this above user figured out his issue he was able to get @reboot
working out of the crontab entry of a user.
I'm not entirely sure what version of cron is used on Ubuntu, but this would seem to indicate that user's can use @reboot
too, or that the bug was fixed at some point in subsequent versions of cron.
datapoint #4
I tested on CentOS 6 the following and it worked.
Example
$ crontab -l
@reboot echo "hi" > /home/sam/reboot.txt 2>&1
I then rebooted the system.
$ sudo reboot
After the reboot.
$ cat reboot.txt
hi
Take aways
- This feature does seem to be supported for both system and user crontab entries.
- You have to make sure that it's supported/working in your particular distro and/or version of the cron package.
For more on how the actual mechanism works for @reboot
I did come across this blog post which discusses the innards. It's titled: @reboot - explaining simple cron magic.
Debugging crond
You can turn up the verbosity of crond
by adding the following to this configuration file on RHEL/CentOS/Fedora based distros.
$ more crond
# Settings for the CRON daemon.
# CRONDARGS= : any extra command-line startup arguments for crond
CRONDARGS="-L 2"
The valid levels are 0, 1, or 2. To revert this file back to it's default logging level simply remove the "-L 2"
when you're done debugging the situation.
edited May 23 '17 at 12:40
Community♦
1
1
answered Jan 17 '14 at 18:27
slm♦slm
254k71537687
254k71537687
@Daniel - please take a peek at my updates. There is a lot more to the@reboot
feature than I initially let on.
– slm♦
Jan 17 '14 at 19:31
Got a comment yesterday, looked at your answer and decided to answer myself after a good night sleep. Set up a VM, retried @reboot, wanted to post my answer and only then saw you 'reworded' your answer :-(
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 5:55
@Anthon - sorry, I quickly answered it yesterday and then continued to research it and found very conflicting details. When I found the bug on Debian about it and Ubuntu SO I realized some of what was at play. I saw that it worked on CentOS and put it together that@reboot
is OK in certain crons, and apparently buggy/broken in others. Hence the confusion.
– slm♦
Jan 18 '14 at 6:01
Apart from that the OP provides little detail, you can easily use something that does not work yet (at boot time) in your script that make it fail, or have it reside on a not-yet-mounted disc. My answer which the OP commented on, was confirmed by a 3rd party as well. It is the black swan problem...
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 6:07
3
You might want to point out that the bug in Ubuntu is easily solved by adding a delay:@reboot sleep 60; <your command>
. To quote the thread, "my guess is that cron's @reboot directive is running too early in the boot process"
– pzkpfw
Feb 19 '15 at 21:30
|
show 1 more comment
@Daniel - please take a peek at my updates. There is a lot more to the@reboot
feature than I initially let on.
– slm♦
Jan 17 '14 at 19:31
Got a comment yesterday, looked at your answer and decided to answer myself after a good night sleep. Set up a VM, retried @reboot, wanted to post my answer and only then saw you 'reworded' your answer :-(
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 5:55
@Anthon - sorry, I quickly answered it yesterday and then continued to research it and found very conflicting details. When I found the bug on Debian about it and Ubuntu SO I realized some of what was at play. I saw that it worked on CentOS and put it together that@reboot
is OK in certain crons, and apparently buggy/broken in others. Hence the confusion.
– slm♦
Jan 18 '14 at 6:01
Apart from that the OP provides little detail, you can easily use something that does not work yet (at boot time) in your script that make it fail, or have it reside on a not-yet-mounted disc. My answer which the OP commented on, was confirmed by a 3rd party as well. It is the black swan problem...
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 6:07
3
You might want to point out that the bug in Ubuntu is easily solved by adding a delay:@reboot sleep 60; <your command>
. To quote the thread, "my guess is that cron's @reboot directive is running too early in the boot process"
– pzkpfw
Feb 19 '15 at 21:30
@Daniel - please take a peek at my updates. There is a lot more to the
@reboot
feature than I initially let on.– slm♦
Jan 17 '14 at 19:31
@Daniel - please take a peek at my updates. There is a lot more to the
@reboot
feature than I initially let on.– slm♦
Jan 17 '14 at 19:31
Got a comment yesterday, looked at your answer and decided to answer myself after a good night sleep. Set up a VM, retried @reboot, wanted to post my answer and only then saw you 'reworded' your answer :-(
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 5:55
Got a comment yesterday, looked at your answer and decided to answer myself after a good night sleep. Set up a VM, retried @reboot, wanted to post my answer and only then saw you 'reworded' your answer :-(
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 5:55
@Anthon - sorry, I quickly answered it yesterday and then continued to research it and found very conflicting details. When I found the bug on Debian about it and Ubuntu SO I realized some of what was at play. I saw that it worked on CentOS and put it together that
@reboot
is OK in certain crons, and apparently buggy/broken in others. Hence the confusion.– slm♦
Jan 18 '14 at 6:01
@Anthon - sorry, I quickly answered it yesterday and then continued to research it and found very conflicting details. When I found the bug on Debian about it and Ubuntu SO I realized some of what was at play. I saw that it worked on CentOS and put it together that
@reboot
is OK in certain crons, and apparently buggy/broken in others. Hence the confusion.– slm♦
Jan 18 '14 at 6:01
Apart from that the OP provides little detail, you can easily use something that does not work yet (at boot time) in your script that make it fail, or have it reside on a not-yet-mounted disc. My answer which the OP commented on, was confirmed by a 3rd party as well. It is the black swan problem...
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 6:07
Apart from that the OP provides little detail, you can easily use something that does not work yet (at boot time) in your script that make it fail, or have it reside on a not-yet-mounted disc. My answer which the OP commented on, was confirmed by a 3rd party as well. It is the black swan problem...
– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 6:07
3
3
You might want to point out that the bug in Ubuntu is easily solved by adding a delay:
@reboot sleep 60; <your command>
. To quote the thread, "my guess is that cron's @reboot directive is running too early in the boot process"– pzkpfw
Feb 19 '15 at 21:30
You might want to point out that the bug in Ubuntu is easily solved by adding a delay:
@reboot sleep 60; <your command>
. To quote the thread, "my guess is that cron's @reboot directive is running too early in the boot process"– pzkpfw
Feb 19 '15 at 21:30
|
show 1 more comment
I found out that on my Ubuntu machine, I do not have access to dns services, yet, at @reboot time. This prevented me from mounting remote volumes. This corny, yet simple, solution worked:
@reboot sleep 60 && /home/me/bin/mount.sh 2>&1 >> /home/me/reboot.log
(in root cron; last parts only for debugging)
This is the only thing that actually works on ubuntu 16.04 for non-root users!
– Aleksandar Pavić
Apr 18 '17 at 13:56
Not working on Debian 8 jessie (gnome 3). :(
– JedatKinports
Apr 29 '17 at 16:25
add a comment |
I found out that on my Ubuntu machine, I do not have access to dns services, yet, at @reboot time. This prevented me from mounting remote volumes. This corny, yet simple, solution worked:
@reboot sleep 60 && /home/me/bin/mount.sh 2>&1 >> /home/me/reboot.log
(in root cron; last parts only for debugging)
This is the only thing that actually works on ubuntu 16.04 for non-root users!
– Aleksandar Pavić
Apr 18 '17 at 13:56
Not working on Debian 8 jessie (gnome 3). :(
– JedatKinports
Apr 29 '17 at 16:25
add a comment |
I found out that on my Ubuntu machine, I do not have access to dns services, yet, at @reboot time. This prevented me from mounting remote volumes. This corny, yet simple, solution worked:
@reboot sleep 60 && /home/me/bin/mount.sh 2>&1 >> /home/me/reboot.log
(in root cron; last parts only for debugging)
I found out that on my Ubuntu machine, I do not have access to dns services, yet, at @reboot time. This prevented me from mounting remote volumes. This corny, yet simple, solution worked:
@reboot sleep 60 && /home/me/bin/mount.sh 2>&1 >> /home/me/reboot.log
(in root cron; last parts only for debugging)
answered Mar 23 '16 at 11:24
AndréAndré
10112
10112
This is the only thing that actually works on ubuntu 16.04 for non-root users!
– Aleksandar Pavić
Apr 18 '17 at 13:56
Not working on Debian 8 jessie (gnome 3). :(
– JedatKinports
Apr 29 '17 at 16:25
add a comment |
This is the only thing that actually works on ubuntu 16.04 for non-root users!
– Aleksandar Pavić
Apr 18 '17 at 13:56
Not working on Debian 8 jessie (gnome 3). :(
– JedatKinports
Apr 29 '17 at 16:25
This is the only thing that actually works on ubuntu 16.04 for non-root users!
– Aleksandar Pavić
Apr 18 '17 at 13:56
This is the only thing that actually works on ubuntu 16.04 for non-root users!
– Aleksandar Pavić
Apr 18 '17 at 13:56
Not working on Debian 8 jessie (gnome 3). :(
– JedatKinports
Apr 29 '17 at 16:25
Not working on Debian 8 jessie (gnome 3). :(
– JedatKinports
Apr 29 '17 at 16:25
add a comment |
I have mac osx as well and I had same issue where my script were not running. but When i fixed my script to like
@reboot cd /home/me/ && sh myscript.sh
it worked fine for me. make sure to make your shell file to be executable by running the command
chmod +x myscript.sh
hope these helps.
add a comment |
I have mac osx as well and I had same issue where my script were not running. but When i fixed my script to like
@reboot cd /home/me/ && sh myscript.sh
it worked fine for me. make sure to make your shell file to be executable by running the command
chmod +x myscript.sh
hope these helps.
add a comment |
I have mac osx as well and I had same issue where my script were not running. but When i fixed my script to like
@reboot cd /home/me/ && sh myscript.sh
it worked fine for me. make sure to make your shell file to be executable by running the command
chmod +x myscript.sh
hope these helps.
I have mac osx as well and I had same issue where my script were not running. but When i fixed my script to like
@reboot cd /home/me/ && sh myscript.sh
it worked fine for me. make sure to make your shell file to be executable by running the command
chmod +x myscript.sh
hope these helps.
edited Feb 8 '17 at 18:35
phk
4,04852255
4,04852255
answered Feb 8 '17 at 18:16
KidaneKidane
211
211
add a comment |
add a comment |
Take a fresh install of Ubuntu Gnome 13.10 (default user in my case: avanderneut).
avanderneut@uggo:~$ crontab -l
no crontab for avanderneut
avanderneut@uggo:~$ crontab -e
no crontab for avanderneut - using an empty one
Select an editor. To change later, run 'select-editor'.
1. /bin/ed
2. /bin/nano <---- easiest
3. /usr/bin/vim.tiny
Choose 1-3 [2]: 3
crontab: installing new crontab
avanderneut@uggo:~$ crontab -l | tail -2
# m h dom mon dow command
@reboot /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ vi /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ more !$
more /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
#! /bin/bash
echo "Reboot script" > /var/tmp/xxx
avanderneut@uggo:~$ chmod 755 /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ ls /var/tmp
avanderneut@uggo:~$ /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ ls /var/tmp
xxx
avanderneut@uggo:~$ rm /var/tmp/xxx
avanderneut@uggo:~$ sudo reboot
[sudo] password for avanderneut:
And see that after reboot the file /var/tmp/xxx
is there although it was not there before rebooting.
This was done with cron version 3.0.
You have to make sure that no services discs etc are used that might not be available at the time the script runs. Start with something simple like the above and make sure it has no terminal output as email is probably not up and running.
You might aslo need a more up-to-date cron (or an upgrade from oracle-linux) if this did not work for you and you need this feature.
I updated my OP to answer your questions. Turns out your suspicion was right from the start: The script to-be-run on reboot resides on a mountable/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol01
partition.
– Withheld
Jan 24 '14 at 12:56
@Daniel Thanks for letting me know, I'm glad you found the culprit. I am not sure if you can delay the start of cron until the partitions are mounted, some of that startup is done in parallel and you would have to change dependencies. I would not want to mess with that and possible breakcron
. You should IMHO take a different route than crontab & @reboot to run something once on startup as the user.
– Anthon
Jan 24 '14 at 13:15
add a comment |
Take a fresh install of Ubuntu Gnome 13.10 (default user in my case: avanderneut).
avanderneut@uggo:~$ crontab -l
no crontab for avanderneut
avanderneut@uggo:~$ crontab -e
no crontab for avanderneut - using an empty one
Select an editor. To change later, run 'select-editor'.
1. /bin/ed
2. /bin/nano <---- easiest
3. /usr/bin/vim.tiny
Choose 1-3 [2]: 3
crontab: installing new crontab
avanderneut@uggo:~$ crontab -l | tail -2
# m h dom mon dow command
@reboot /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ vi /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ more !$
more /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
#! /bin/bash
echo "Reboot script" > /var/tmp/xxx
avanderneut@uggo:~$ chmod 755 /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ ls /var/tmp
avanderneut@uggo:~$ /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ ls /var/tmp
xxx
avanderneut@uggo:~$ rm /var/tmp/xxx
avanderneut@uggo:~$ sudo reboot
[sudo] password for avanderneut:
And see that after reboot the file /var/tmp/xxx
is there although it was not there before rebooting.
This was done with cron version 3.0.
You have to make sure that no services discs etc are used that might not be available at the time the script runs. Start with something simple like the above and make sure it has no terminal output as email is probably not up and running.
You might aslo need a more up-to-date cron (or an upgrade from oracle-linux) if this did not work for you and you need this feature.
I updated my OP to answer your questions. Turns out your suspicion was right from the start: The script to-be-run on reboot resides on a mountable/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol01
partition.
– Withheld
Jan 24 '14 at 12:56
@Daniel Thanks for letting me know, I'm glad you found the culprit. I am not sure if you can delay the start of cron until the partitions are mounted, some of that startup is done in parallel and you would have to change dependencies. I would not want to mess with that and possible breakcron
. You should IMHO take a different route than crontab & @reboot to run something once on startup as the user.
– Anthon
Jan 24 '14 at 13:15
add a comment |
Take a fresh install of Ubuntu Gnome 13.10 (default user in my case: avanderneut).
avanderneut@uggo:~$ crontab -l
no crontab for avanderneut
avanderneut@uggo:~$ crontab -e
no crontab for avanderneut - using an empty one
Select an editor. To change later, run 'select-editor'.
1. /bin/ed
2. /bin/nano <---- easiest
3. /usr/bin/vim.tiny
Choose 1-3 [2]: 3
crontab: installing new crontab
avanderneut@uggo:~$ crontab -l | tail -2
# m h dom mon dow command
@reboot /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ vi /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ more !$
more /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
#! /bin/bash
echo "Reboot script" > /var/tmp/xxx
avanderneut@uggo:~$ chmod 755 /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ ls /var/tmp
avanderneut@uggo:~$ /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ ls /var/tmp
xxx
avanderneut@uggo:~$ rm /var/tmp/xxx
avanderneut@uggo:~$ sudo reboot
[sudo] password for avanderneut:
And see that after reboot the file /var/tmp/xxx
is there although it was not there before rebooting.
This was done with cron version 3.0.
You have to make sure that no services discs etc are used that might not be available at the time the script runs. Start with something simple like the above and make sure it has no terminal output as email is probably not up and running.
You might aslo need a more up-to-date cron (or an upgrade from oracle-linux) if this did not work for you and you need this feature.
Take a fresh install of Ubuntu Gnome 13.10 (default user in my case: avanderneut).
avanderneut@uggo:~$ crontab -l
no crontab for avanderneut
avanderneut@uggo:~$ crontab -e
no crontab for avanderneut - using an empty one
Select an editor. To change later, run 'select-editor'.
1. /bin/ed
2. /bin/nano <---- easiest
3. /usr/bin/vim.tiny
Choose 1-3 [2]: 3
crontab: installing new crontab
avanderneut@uggo:~$ crontab -l | tail -2
# m h dom mon dow command
@reboot /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ vi /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ more !$
more /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
#! /bin/bash
echo "Reboot script" > /var/tmp/xxx
avanderneut@uggo:~$ chmod 755 /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ ls /var/tmp
avanderneut@uggo:~$ /home/avanderneut/bin/on_reboot
avanderneut@uggo:~$ ls /var/tmp
xxx
avanderneut@uggo:~$ rm /var/tmp/xxx
avanderneut@uggo:~$ sudo reboot
[sudo] password for avanderneut:
And see that after reboot the file /var/tmp/xxx
is there although it was not there before rebooting.
This was done with cron version 3.0.
You have to make sure that no services discs etc are used that might not be available at the time the script runs. Start with something simple like the above and make sure it has no terminal output as email is probably not up and running.
You might aslo need a more up-to-date cron (or an upgrade from oracle-linux) if this did not work for you and you need this feature.
answered Jan 18 '14 at 5:44
AnthonAnthon
61.3k17105168
61.3k17105168
I updated my OP to answer your questions. Turns out your suspicion was right from the start: The script to-be-run on reboot resides on a mountable/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol01
partition.
– Withheld
Jan 24 '14 at 12:56
@Daniel Thanks for letting me know, I'm glad you found the culprit. I am not sure if you can delay the start of cron until the partitions are mounted, some of that startup is done in parallel and you would have to change dependencies. I would not want to mess with that and possible breakcron
. You should IMHO take a different route than crontab & @reboot to run something once on startup as the user.
– Anthon
Jan 24 '14 at 13:15
add a comment |
I updated my OP to answer your questions. Turns out your suspicion was right from the start: The script to-be-run on reboot resides on a mountable/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol01
partition.
– Withheld
Jan 24 '14 at 12:56
@Daniel Thanks for letting me know, I'm glad you found the culprit. I am not sure if you can delay the start of cron until the partitions are mounted, some of that startup is done in parallel and you would have to change dependencies. I would not want to mess with that and possible breakcron
. You should IMHO take a different route than crontab & @reboot to run something once on startup as the user.
– Anthon
Jan 24 '14 at 13:15
I updated my OP to answer your questions. Turns out your suspicion was right from the start: The script to-be-run on reboot resides on a mountable
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol01
partition.– Withheld
Jan 24 '14 at 12:56
I updated my OP to answer your questions. Turns out your suspicion was right from the start: The script to-be-run on reboot resides on a mountable
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol01
partition.– Withheld
Jan 24 '14 at 12:56
@Daniel Thanks for letting me know, I'm glad you found the culprit. I am not sure if you can delay the start of cron until the partitions are mounted, some of that startup is done in parallel and you would have to change dependencies. I would not want to mess with that and possible break
cron
. You should IMHO take a different route than crontab & @reboot to run something once on startup as the user.– Anthon
Jan 24 '14 at 13:15
@Daniel Thanks for letting me know, I'm glad you found the culprit. I am not sure if you can delay the start of cron until the partitions are mounted, some of that startup is done in parallel and you would have to change dependencies. I would not want to mess with that and possible break
cron
. You should IMHO take a different route than crontab & @reboot to run something once on startup as the user.– Anthon
Jan 24 '14 at 13:15
add a comment |
I don't know if you have already solved this, or if any of the above was the solution you needed, but another possibility is:
if you have your /home directory encrypted, it may not be available until you log in, i.e. it is not available at reboot.
in this scenario, you could move your scripts to another location like /srv or /opt or /usr/local/bin/ etc.
add a comment |
I don't know if you have already solved this, or if any of the above was the solution you needed, but another possibility is:
if you have your /home directory encrypted, it may not be available until you log in, i.e. it is not available at reboot.
in this scenario, you could move your scripts to another location like /srv or /opt or /usr/local/bin/ etc.
add a comment |
I don't know if you have already solved this, or if any of the above was the solution you needed, but another possibility is:
if you have your /home directory encrypted, it may not be available until you log in, i.e. it is not available at reboot.
in this scenario, you could move your scripts to another location like /srv or /opt or /usr/local/bin/ etc.
I don't know if you have already solved this, or if any of the above was the solution you needed, but another possibility is:
if you have your /home directory encrypted, it may not be available until you log in, i.e. it is not available at reboot.
in this scenario, you could move your scripts to another location like /srv or /opt or /usr/local/bin/ etc.
answered Apr 6 '17 at 16:44
fbasfbas
1265
1265
add a comment |
add a comment |
I would say yes for the question. Just had difficulties with running cron on reboot (Debian 3.10.70) and managed to solve with:
@reboot root /usr/bin/python3 /path/to/script
And a newline character 'n' in the end
This is the contents of file:
/etc/cron.d/runOnReboot
Finally, I think it is worth noting an abstract from man 5 crontab
...
The format of a cron command is very much the V7 standard, with a number of upward-compatible extensions. Each line has five time and date
fields, followed by a command, followed by a newline character ('n'). The system crontab (/etc/crontab) uses the same format, except that the
username for the command is specified after the time and date fields and before the command. The fields may be separated by spaces or tabs. The
maximum permitted length for the command field is 998 characters.
...
add a comment |
I would say yes for the question. Just had difficulties with running cron on reboot (Debian 3.10.70) and managed to solve with:
@reboot root /usr/bin/python3 /path/to/script
And a newline character 'n' in the end
This is the contents of file:
/etc/cron.d/runOnReboot
Finally, I think it is worth noting an abstract from man 5 crontab
...
The format of a cron command is very much the V7 standard, with a number of upward-compatible extensions. Each line has five time and date
fields, followed by a command, followed by a newline character ('n'). The system crontab (/etc/crontab) uses the same format, except that the
username for the command is specified after the time and date fields and before the command. The fields may be separated by spaces or tabs. The
maximum permitted length for the command field is 998 characters.
...
add a comment |
I would say yes for the question. Just had difficulties with running cron on reboot (Debian 3.10.70) and managed to solve with:
@reboot root /usr/bin/python3 /path/to/script
And a newline character 'n' in the end
This is the contents of file:
/etc/cron.d/runOnReboot
Finally, I think it is worth noting an abstract from man 5 crontab
...
The format of a cron command is very much the V7 standard, with a number of upward-compatible extensions. Each line has five time and date
fields, followed by a command, followed by a newline character ('n'). The system crontab (/etc/crontab) uses the same format, except that the
username for the command is specified after the time and date fields and before the command. The fields may be separated by spaces or tabs. The
maximum permitted length for the command field is 998 characters.
...
I would say yes for the question. Just had difficulties with running cron on reboot (Debian 3.10.70) and managed to solve with:
@reboot root /usr/bin/python3 /path/to/script
And a newline character 'n' in the end
This is the contents of file:
/etc/cron.d/runOnReboot
Finally, I think it is worth noting an abstract from man 5 crontab
...
The format of a cron command is very much the V7 standard, with a number of upward-compatible extensions. Each line has five time and date
fields, followed by a command, followed by a newline character ('n'). The system crontab (/etc/crontab) uses the same format, except that the
username for the command is specified after the time and date fields and before the command. The fields may be separated by spaces or tabs. The
maximum permitted length for the command field is 998 characters.
...
answered Feb 27 at 15:28
dmytro.poliarushdmytro.poliarush
585
585
add a comment |
add a comment |
prueba:
usuario@ubuntu:~$ touch script.sh
usuario@ubuntu:~$ chmod +x script.sh
usuario@ubuntu:~$ $crontrab -e
@reboot /home/usuario/script.sh
save and restart your pc
add a comment |
prueba:
usuario@ubuntu:~$ touch script.sh
usuario@ubuntu:~$ chmod +x script.sh
usuario@ubuntu:~$ $crontrab -e
@reboot /home/usuario/script.sh
save and restart your pc
add a comment |
prueba:
usuario@ubuntu:~$ touch script.sh
usuario@ubuntu:~$ chmod +x script.sh
usuario@ubuntu:~$ $crontrab -e
@reboot /home/usuario/script.sh
save and restart your pc
prueba:
usuario@ubuntu:~$ touch script.sh
usuario@ubuntu:~$ chmod +x script.sh
usuario@ubuntu:~$ $crontrab -e
@reboot /home/usuario/script.sh
save and restart your pc
answered May 22 '18 at 3:13
gnumangnuman
1
1
add a comment |
add a comment |
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2
your user crontab does not support @reboot option, there are a few crontab layouts, once you start poking around.
– X Tian
Jan 17 '14 at 18:20
@XTian Thanks. What is the recommended way to run a script on reboot as a user other than root?
– Withheld
Jan 17 '14 at 18:38
2
What you are missing is unclear, but what we are missing is details. What version of oracle-linux are you running? Which version of cron do you have? Is
/home
a mounted partition? What are the contents of your/home/me/myscript.sh
?– Anthon
Jan 18 '14 at 5:47
1
If you're using Oracle's Lin. ver. 5 there is this changelog about issues with vixie-cron +
@reboot
. oss.oracle.com/pipermail/el-errata/2012-March/002655.html– slm♦
Jan 18 '14 at 6:08
1
@Daniel - is
myscript.sh
executable?chmod +x myscript.sh
.– slm♦
Jan 24 '14 at 12:51