Re: Running regularly

[rcain@netcom.com (Robert Cain)]

Hal sez:
> 
> > Before I start throwing out ideas that I'm sure aren't new to readers here,
> > I have a simple question that perhaps I should post to comp.unix.questions
> > or comp.lang.perl, but.... Can I, and how would I, get a perl script to
> > kick in and send out mail every few minutes when I am NOT logged in. Is this
> > possible on Netcom?
> 
> Most public Unix systems will not let you do this, in my experience.
> The two Unix commands which usually give you the ability to run programs
> at regular intervals are "at" and "crontab".  You can read the man pages
> and try running these to see if they are enabled for you.
> 

If you run into this, there is a sneaky way to do it if you have a
friend somewhere that doesn't restrict at or crontab and if your system
provides elm and will will honor a .forward file.  Have your friend set
up a crontab that mails you a short note with some header
characteristic that the filter program for elm can recognize via the
filter-rules file and kick off an invocation of whatever you want to do
each time it recieves one of these notes.  Sneaky but it works.  :-)


Peace,

Bob

-- 
Bob Cain    rcain@netcom.com   408-354-8021


           "I used to be different.  But now I'm the same."


--------------PGP 1.0 or 2.0 public key available on request.------------------