How to Use "at" Command Line Utility?

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Level 2

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How to Use "at" Command Line Utility?

I've been playing with the command line utility "at" for a couple of hours and I cannot get it to work. I've gone over the man page several times. I've tried various syntax. I've Googled and have not found any additional explanation.

I can get it to queu a job, but it never executes the job. The time for it to execute comes and goes while the job just stays in the queue.

Can anyone tell me how to get "at" working? What is the proper syntax? Can you give me an example I could test?

Thanks

MacBook Pro 15, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Jun 25, 2011 2:44 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

MrHoffman

Community+ 2024

Level 10

117,525 points

Jun 25, 2011 4:44 PM in response to Auctoris

Guessing... If you are attempting to invoke a script or executabled, is the script marked as executable?

chmod u+x script

Do you have an at.allow file around and (if you do), does it allow your user access?

Did you use launchd to load the atrun plist?

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.atrun.plist

Are you using a shell-level text editor and not (for instance) TextEdit or other GUI text editor?

There are examples of using the at command here and here.

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Answer 2

Auctoris Author

Level 2

178 points

Jun 25, 2011 4:55 PM in response to MrHoffman

Did you use launchd to load the atrun plist?

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.atrun.plist

That would be the problem. I had no idea there was another step involved in getting at to run. I just looked at the atrun man page and found that Apple has it disabled by default. Thank you Apple.

The atrun utility runs commands queued by at(1). It is invoked periodi-

cally by launchd(8) as specified in the com.apple.atrun.plist property

list. By default the property list contains the Disabled key set to

true, so atrun is never invoked.

Thanks for the reply and the help.

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Answer 3

twtwtw

Level 5

4,936 points

Jun 25, 2011 4:58 PM in response to Auctoris

just as an FYI, I'm pretty sure the reason at is disabled is that Apple's trying to convince people to to us launchd instead (note that at is run by launchd anyway, so…)

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Answer 4

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Jun 25, 2011 9:08 PM in response to twtwtw

It's disabled because it prevents hard disks from spinning down.

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