Gotta love cron syntax. The ease of edlin combined with the readability of perl.
On Wed, Dec 21, 2022 at 4:08 PM Steve Dum <[email protected]> wrote: > it's been so long since I fiddled with cron but from man 5 crontab > > The > time and date fields are: > > field allowed values > ----- -------------- > minute 0–59 > hour 0–23 > day of month 1–31 > month 1–12 (or names, see below) > day of week 0–7 (0 or 7 is Sun, or use names) > > A field may be an asterisk (*), which always stands for > ``first-last''. > > so * * 21 * * > means launch on each minute 0-59, every hour 0-23, 21'st day of the > month, Every month > and and regardless of which day of the week the 21'st happens to fall on.. > more likely you wanted 0 0 21 * * > which would have got you midnight on the 21st of each month, assuming > you were planing to delete it later today. > John Jason Jordan 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? > >>> > >
