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startup
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URL:
https://askubuntu.com/q/991672
Title:
How to run scripts on start up?
ID:
/2018/01/03/How-to-run-scripts-on-start-up_
Created:
January 3, 2018
Edited: October 29, 2022
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September 15, 2024
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cron answer implemented different from top voted
This answer still uses cron but uses a different method than the top voted answer. This works since Ubuntu 16.04 but probably supported much sooner. It’s just that I started using cron to run jobs when computer boots up since 16.04.
When does cron run?
In comments someone asked “when do they run?”. You can tell in syslog / journalctl:
$ journalctl -b | grep cron
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien cron[919]: (CRON) INFO (pidfile fd = 3)
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien cron[919]: (CRON) INFO (Running @reboot jobs)
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien systemd[1]: Started Run anacron jobs.
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien anacron[949]: Anacron 2.3 started on 2018-01-02
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien anacron[949]: Normal exit (0 jobs run)
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien CRON[952]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien CRON[954]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien CRON[951]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien CRON[950]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien CRON[985]: (root) CMD ( /usr/local/bin/cron-reboot-cycle-grub-background)
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien CRON[954]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien cron[919]: sendmail: Cannot open smtp.gmail.com:587
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien CRON[952]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien cron[919]: sendmail: Cannot open smtp.gmail.com:587
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien CRON[950]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
One thing to note is cron can email you status of jobs run and @reboot jobs run so early network manager and email won’t be running unless you put a sleep command into your script(s).
Where to put your scripts
Put your scripts in the directory /etc/cron.d:
$ ll /etc/cron.d
total 44
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 26 19:53 ./
drwxr-xr-x 139 root root 12288 Dec 31 13:58 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 244 Dec 28 2014 anacron
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 148 Feb 18 2017 cycle-grub-background
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 138 Mar 5 2017 display-auto-brightness
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 460 Nov 26 19:53 nvidia-hdmi-sound
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 102 Feb 9 2013 .placeholder
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 224 Nov 19 2016 touch-vmlinuz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 700 Aug 5 11:15 turn-off-hyper-threading
What does a script look like?
Here are a couple of scripts I have setup to run each boot:
$ cat /etc/cron.d/cycle-grub-background
SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
@reboot root /usr/local/bin/cron-reboot-cycle-grub-background
$ cat /etc/cron.d/touch-vmlinuz
SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
@reboot root touch "/boot/vmlinuz-"`uname -r`