At 01:59 AM 5/16/99 -0400, Jimmy C. Thomson wrote: >How can I get a program to run at a specified time (w/o root access)? >I tried >#% at -m 0730 xclock > >but I get an error (at: bad time specification). >Any ideas? When I type this exact string into my Linux host (as either root or an ordinary user), it accepts it and queues up the job (I do have to type ^D to signal end of text). Are you sure you entered it exactly as shown here? If so, it must be a problem specific to your version of at (or at least a mismatch between your version and mine). >Alternatly, how can I make a process run for a certain amount >of time and then exit? Assuming it's a process not designed to do this itself, the only general way I can think of is to write a wrapper program that a. launches the app as a separate process b. records the pid of the detached process c. sleeps for the necessary time d. wakes up and kills the process This is doable in C or Perl, and probably in a shell script also (but I'm not much of a shell script programmer, so who knows for sure). If you want this to happen at a regular time, you could use cron -- start the process itself using cron, then at a later time, have cron run a scrip that finds and kills it (of you have ppp-off or some equivalent on your system you can see how to do this last part in a shell script). ------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--- Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo 762 Garland Drive Palo Alto, CA 94303-3603 650.328.4219 voice [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------
