> now I have to figure out why '* * 21 * *' repeats the message every 60
> seconds.
because that first '*' tells cron to repeat an action once every minute of the
hour, and the second '*' tells it to repeat the action every hour of the day.
Pick an hour you want the message to appear, and replace
* * 21 * *
with
0 {hour} 21 * *
and you'll get the message once, at the top of the hour, on the 21st of each
month.
--
- David Fleck
------- Original Message -------
On Wednesday, December 21st, 2022 at 4:12 PM, John Jason Jordan
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Oops. Something is wrong with this line:
>
> * * 21 * * MAILTO="" DISPLAY=:0.0 gxmessage -font "Junicode 24" Pay
> T-Mobile
>
> I expected it to pop up a message today (the 21st), and it did so, but
> 60 second later it opened up another one, and again every sixty seconds.
> I couldn't figure out how to shut down gxmessage. It's not in Top or
> Task Manager. Eventually I opened crontab again and put a # in front of
> the line, then saved it and exited from the editor. That did the job,
> but now I have to figure out why '* * 21 * *' repeats the message every
> 60 seconds.
>
> Steve,
>
> Thanks for the suggestion. I spent some time trying to figure out how
> to do it with cron and gxmessage. I added this line to crontab:
>
> * * 21 * * MAILTO="" DISPLAY=:0.0 gxmessage -font "Junicode 24" Pay
> T-Mobile
>
> That is, I set it at the 21st, because that's tomorrow, to see if cron
> pops up the message. If I do just the gxmessage part at the command
> line it pops up the message, with an 'OK' button to close the message,
> so it ought to work if I got the crontab line correct.
>
> Crossing fingers for tomorrow. :)
>
>
> On Mon, 19 Dec 2022 23:42:07 -0800
> Steve Dum [email protected] dijo:
>
> > my ubuntu 22.04 release comes with a program called notify_send that
> > does what you request
> > it takes a -t n option to set the time it stays on screen and totally
> > ignores the parameter.
> > However it takes a urgency argument, -u critical seems to leave the
> > note on screen until you delete it.
> > notify-send -u critical "time to write that check"
> > seems to do what you want. But if you do more than 1 notify-send they
> > appear serially so you don't see the next one
> > until you close the current one.
> > looking at the online man page, it has tabs for every supported ubuntu
> > version so it's been around a while.
> > steve
> >
> > John Jason Jordan wrote:
> >
> > > I need an little application that will pop up a reminder on the same
> > > day of every month, and crucially, leave it on the screen until I
> > > manually close the window. There are lots of notify tools, but they
> > > just pop up a little notice for 10-20 seconds and then the notice
> > > disappears.
> > >
> > > So far the only thing I have found is Remind, and its GUI tool,
> > > Tkremind. I've installed both, and they run, but there is no
> > > documentation other than a man page, which I can't figure out. That
> > > is, I created a reminder, but it never appears, so clearly I haven't
> > > done it right.
> > >
> > > The purpose is to pay a bill that comes due every month on the 20th,
> > > and each month with a different amount. I could set up an auto-pay
> > > with my bank, but not if the amount varies. The vendor also has an
> > > auto-pay option, but to use it I have to give them my credit card
> > > number and authorization to charge it for whatever they want. No
> > > thanks, I'm not that stupid.
> > >
> > > I could probably figure out how to use cron, but cron needs to call a
> > > program to do the announcement. Or at least I think it does. Cron is
> > > a mystery to me.
> > >
> > > Surely there exists a simple, understandable reminder app. Any
> > > suggestions?
