Open gnome-terminal as a cron job

[Dylan Semler]

On 10/17/06, Mikkel L. Ellertson <mikkel at infinity-ltd.com> wrote:
> Dylan Semler wrote:
> > I'm tryng to run a cron job that will open a terminal.  The following
> > is my user crontab (from crontab -e)
> >
> >
> > SHELL=/bin/bash
> > PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
> > MAILTO=Dylan
> > HOME=/
> > DISPLAY=:0
> >
> > 15 0-23 * * * gnome-terminal
> >
> >
> > A terminal never opens, and I get the following error in
> > /var/spool/mail/root (shouldn't it be in .../mail/Dylan??)
> >
> The way email addresses are handled, user names with uppercase
> letters are a bad idea. By default, the name is converted to all
> lowercase before it is delivered. So Dylan will never get mail, but
> dylan will.

Ah.  I guess I'll just have to deal with this.

> >
> > Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
> >
> You are running into the security restrictions of the X server.
> Normally, only the user that is currently logged into X can run
> programs that connect to the X server. If you are running the cron
> job as the user that is logged in, it may work if you leave HOME set
> to the user's home directory instead of changing it to /. That way,
> the proper authentication file is found that lets a program connect.

That fixed it.  Thanks a lot for the help.

> If you explain what you are trying to do, we can probably help you
> find a better way to do it. I can not picture what you are trying to
> do by opening a terminal from a cron job.

Basically, I have a program that searches certain bittorrent sites for
new torrents that I usually like.  When it finds one, I want it to
open a new terminal and run bittorrent-console in that terminal to
start downloading the torrent.

Thanks again.
-- 
Dylan

Type faster.  Use Dvorak:
http://dvzine.org