[ale] Launch GUI from Cron

[dkg at fifthhorseman.net (Daniel Kahn Gillmor)]

On Sun 2007-09-09 02:51:15 -0400, Brian Pitts wrote:

> I created the following script
>
> #!/bin/sh
> export DISPLAY=:0
> zenity --question --text="What are you doing?"
>
> and added an entry for it in my crontab. Although syslog shows that it
> runs, I never see the dialog. Any suggestions on making this work?

hrm.  seems to work for me (though i don't know zenity).  When I set
my crontab to this:

# m h  dom mon dow   command
* * * * * bash -c 'DISPLAY=:0 xmessage foo'

every minute i get a little annoying "foo" popup dialog box.

I'm running debian lenny/sid, and my X session is managed by
openbox-session.

Is it possible that your machine is configured to use randomized
$XAUTHORITY locations for each X session or something?  If that was
the case, processes running under the crontab wouldn't be able to
authenticate to your X session.

Is there a way you can ask zenity to provide more explicit debugging
spew?  can you have the script dump error messages to a logfile?

  exec 1>~/nag.log && exec 2>&1

Is there anything in your ~/.xsession-errors (or equivalent file)?

have you double-checked that yer actually using DISPLAY :0?

    --dkg
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