Linux:Scheduling Jobs
=====================
:author: Aaron Ball
:email: nullspoon@iohq.net



I was recently needing to schedule the reboot of a print server (Ubuntu), but
was unsure how. After looking around a bit, I can do all kinds of things with
it. For a simple use case though, here is how to reboot a server with at...

Since we're restarting the server, we need root privileges for that, so
we have to run this as sudo this time around. type:

----
sudo at 23:00
----

You should see...

----
warning: commands will be executed using /bin/sh
at>
----

Type the command you want to occur at 23:00 (11:00 pm). In our case, we're
going to restart the server.

----
shutdown -r now
----

Press **enter**. From here you press *ctrl+d* and that will save the job for
later execution.

The cool thing about at is how intuitive it is. For instance, we just used
23:00 to schedule an e-mail for 11:00 pm. Instead, we could have typed **at
11:00 pm**. Furthermore, if we wanted to schedule something for tomorrow at
11:00 pm, we could type **at 11:00 pm tomorrow**. It's a pity for those of us
who are forgetful...the "at" utility unfortunately does not understand
yesterday.

That's how to do it.

If you want to list all of the jobs for your user, use the command
**atq**. If you need to remove a job, use the *atrm* command (this uses
job numbers from the list atq produces).

Happy scheduling.

... Really, be happy. At least you don't have to be there at 3:00 am to reboot
the server.

----
sudo at 3:00 am a> shutdown -r now
----

* ctrl+d*

...later at 11:30 pm

----
echo 'ZZZZzzzzzzzzzz...'
----


Category:Linux

Category:Cron


// vim: set syntax=asciidoc: