10. Chronological Jobs

(sh = Bourne shell, ksh = Korn shell, csh = C shell)

                                                                                                                      
1. Modify the below in their respective shell to make something occur every time you login:

• for sh, ksh   - .profile             
• for csh - .login

2. Modify these to make something occur every time you logoff

• for sh, ksh - .profile    
• for csh - .logout

3 utilities that will run jobs for you at another time are: cron, at, and batch, which are located in /etc/cron.d

To run chronological jobs do the following:

cron Make a file called cron.allow or cron.deny (not both!)

Put user name in cron.allow for specific people allowed, cron.deny for certain people not allowed at & batch Make a file called at.allow or at.deny (not both!) Put user name in at.allow for specific people allowed or cron.deny for certain people not allowed (the at. applies to both at and batch files)

at command syntax - at [time to begin job] [ date] (i.e. at 10am august 23) after you type the at command you will get an at> prompt then you can type commands i.e.: at> audioplay /usr/demo/sound/sounds/bark.au (this is the syntax of commands with the at> prompt - [ command] [where file is located to play]

• ctrl d – gets you out of at prompt
• at –l –lists jobs in queue
• To end a job: at –r [job name] (you get job name by at –l)

For batch files you will also get an “at>” prompt but you don’t need to enter a time.

For cron jobs do the following (make sure have EDITOR=vi in your .profile file, another way is to setenv editvi for cshell or export editor, editor=vi for sh and Ksh)

• crontab –l (shows all your current cron jobs)
• crontab –e (this starts) (lets you edit your cron jobs)

The following is the syntax for setting up time: mmhhhhdd mm dd- this first m is for minute (0-59 (so 10=10 min after hour), the h’s are for hour (0-23), d’s are for day (of month 1-31) the second set of m’s are for month (1-12), and the second set of d’s are for day of week (0=Sunday, 1=Monday, 2=Tuesday, etc., *=doesn’t matter which day)
*=Note: Doesn’t matter for all fields, be careful when putting in minutes field, because your cron job will run every minute

To edit go into crontab using vi editor and type syntax, example: 0 12 * * 1 echo ”Monday Meeting” | mailx –s “don’t forget” all (the preceding would mail a message to all users at 12:00 on Monday) -or- 0 12 * * 1 mailx –s “don’t forget” all , /export/home/joe/reminder (this is the same as the above message)

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