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at command

The idea of the at command is to facilitate "one time command scheduling". In this sense it is complementary to cron which usually is used to schedule periodic jobs. You to start to start a long job and then log off the system you can also use nohup. In Solaris and AIX nohup permits converting already running process to "nohup status" which is really nice. We will be taking about unix command, but at command also exists in Windows (with a different syntax).

At the same time at is quite different from cron: at command preserves the environment in which it was invoked, while cron does not (it executes command in its own "cron" environment, and you should not expect that PATH and other valuables are preserved from the account under which cron is running).

You can compile crontab into sequence of at command and use at exclusively. If you consolidate all crontabs on one server and compilation at the end of each scheduling day via ssh on target servers for the next day you actually will have a more flexible environment, somewhat similar to expensive Enterprise Job schedulers.

at command can be used similar to the nohup command and screen command: you can execute a command (or shell script) on the server using the at command and then logout from the server:

at -f myjob now
exit

• Use the atq command to display the jobs you have queued using the at command

at is a special version of cron and like cron it is controlled by two files that list users one per line similar to cron.allow and cron.deny and control the behavior of the command:

Linux 

• /etc/at.allow

• /etc/at.deny

Solaris

• /usr/lib/cron/at.allow

• /usr/lib/cron/at.deny

Some sysadmin hardlink those two files to cron files to avoid synchronization problem.

The at command is part of the set of four commands that includes at, batch, atq, and atrm commands:

• at executes commands at a specified time.
• atq [-V] [-q queue] lists the user's pending jobs, unless the user is the superuser; in that case, everybody's jobs are listed. The format the output lines (one for each job) is: Job number, date, hour, queue, and username.
• atrm [-V] job [job...] deletes jobs, identified by their job number.
• batch [-V] [-q queue] [-f file] [-mv] [TIME] executes commands when system load levels permit; in other words, when the load average drops below 1.5, or the value specified in the invocation of atd.

Syntax of Linux Gnu implementation is as follows:

at [-V] [-q queue] [-f file] [-mldbv] TIME

at -c job [job...]

• -V prints the version number to standard error.
• -q queue uses the specified queue. A queue designation consists of a single letter; valid queue designations range from a to z. and A to Z. The a queue is the default for at and the b queue for batch. Queues with higher letters run with increased niceness. The special queue "=" is reserved for jobs which are currently running. If a job is submitted to a queue designated with an uppercase letter, it is treated as if it had been submitted to batch at that time. If atq is given a specific queue, it will only show jobs pending in that queue.
• -m -- Send mail to the user when the job has completed even if there was no output.
• -f file Reads the job from file rather than standard input.
• -l -- Is an alias for atq.
• -d -- Is an alias for atrm.
• -v -- Shows the time the job will be executed. Times displayed will be in the format "1997-02-20 14:50" unless the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT is set; then, it will be "Thu Feb 20 14:50:00 1996".
• -c -- cats the jobs listed on the command line to standard output.

The most important ability of at command is the its ability to operate in relative time terms. There are several important relative time frames used:

• now - Indicates the current day and time. Invoking at - now will submit an at-job for potentially immediate execution.
• today
• tomorrow
• midnight - Indicates the time 12:00 am (00:00).
• noon - Indicates the time 12:00 pm.

The optional increment after time specification in at command permit to specify offset from the time. It should be a number preceded by a plus sign (+) with one of the following suffixes:

• minutes,
• hours,
• days,
• weeks,
• months,
• years.

The spacing is quite flexible as long as there are no ambiguities. For example:

at 0815am Jan 24
at 8 :15amjan24
at now "+ 1day"
at 5 pm FRIday
at '17 utc+30minutes'

The singular forms are also accepted, for example

at now + 1 minute

The keyword next can be used as an equivalent to an increment + 1. For example the following two commands are equivalent:

at 2pm + 1 week
at 2pm next week

The last two are equivalent commands.

One can also use at for periodic but dynamic rescheduling of jobs. In such case at can be specified inside the job with new, dynamic interval.

Simplified (and actually wrong as if interval is fixed crontab is a more appropriate vehicle for such work) example, can be something like a script named my.daily which we force to run every day by invoking at inside the script itself:

# my.daily
# runs every day
at now tomorrow < my.daily

... ... ...

Solaris Reference

There are two variants of at in Solaris: System V and BSD:

System V

/usr/bin/at [-c| -k| -s] [-m] [-f file] [-p project] [-q queuename] -t time
/usr/bin/at [-c| -k| -s] [-m] [-f file] [-p project] [-q queuename] timespec…
/usr/bin/at -l [-p project] [-q queuename] [at_job_id...]
/usr/bin/at -r at_job_id. ..
/usr/bin/batch [-p project]

BSD

/usr/xpg4/bin/at [-c| -k| -s] [-m] [-f file] [-p project] [-q queuename] -t time
/usr/xpg4/bin/at [-c| -k| -s] [-m] [-f file] [-p project] [-q queuename] timespec…
/usr/xpg4/bin/at -l [-p project] [-q queuename] [at_job_id...]
/usr/xpg4/bin/at -r at_job_id. ..
/usr/xpg4/bin/batch [-p project]

Two "twins" at and batch are very similar with batch being alias to at with supplied "now" time of execution.

Commands of the forms:

/usr/bin/batch [-p project]
/usr/xpg4/bin/batch [-p project]

are respectively equivalent to:

/usr/bin/at -q b [-p project] now
/usr/xpg4/bin/at -q b -m [-p project] now

At the same time at is quite different animal than cron: "at" preserves the environment in which it was invoked, while cron does not (it executes command in its own "cron" environment, and you should not expect that PATH and other valuables will be preserved).

The at utility is pipable: it can reads commands from standard input and submit a job to be executed immediately (like in example below) or at a later time.

echo "perl myjob" | at now

The at-job is executed in a separate invocation of the shell, running in a separate process group with no controlling terminal, except that the environment variables, current working directory, file creation mask (see umask(1)), and system resource limits (for sh and ksh only, see ulimit(1)) in effect when the at utility is executed is retained and used when the at-job is executed.

When the at-job is submitted, the at_job_id and scheduled time are written to standard error. The at_job_id is an identifier that is a string consisting solely of alphanumeric characters and the period character. The at_job_id is assigned by the system when the job is scheduled such that it uniquely identifies a particular job.

User notification and the processing of the job's standard output and standard error are described under the -m option.

Permissions

Like with cron two files that list users one per line and are similar to cron control files control the behavior of the command:

• /usr/lib/cron/at.allow
• /usr/lib/cron/at.deny

Rules

• Users are permitted to use at and batch (see below) if their name appears in the file /usr/lib/cron/at.allow If this file exists all users the need to use at should be explicitly listed.

  If that file does not exist, the file /usr/lib/cron/at.deny is checked to determine if the user should be denied access to at.
  

• If neither file exists, only a user with the solaris.jobs.user authorization is allowed to submit a job.
  
• If only at.deny exists and is empty, global usage is permitted.
• cron and at jobs are not be executed if the user's account is locked. Only accounts which are not locked as defined in shadow(4) will have their job or process executed. For example webservd is a "locked" user under Solaris 10 and you need to unlock it before it is possible to use at for submitting jobs from this user. Un such cases /var/cron/log will contain the entry like the folllowing:

  ! bad user (webservd) Fri Apr 21 14:47:49 2006

  That can also happen with human accounts if password aging was turned on. Apparently if the password expires cron jobs do not run.
  

batch

The batch utility reads commands to be executed one after another and is equivalent to at now. The difference is that the queue used is a special at queue, that exists specifically for batch jobs. Execution of submitted jobs can be delayed by limits on the number of jobs allowed to run concurrently. See queuedefs(4).

OPTIONS

If the -c, -k, or -s options are not specified, the SHELL environment variable by default determines which shell to use.

For /usr/xpg4/bin/at and /usr/xpg4/bin/batch, if SHELL is unset or NULL, /usr/xpg4/bin/sh is used.

For usr/bin/at and /usr/bin/batch, if SHELL is unset or NULL, /bin/sh is used.

The following options are supported:

-c

C shell. csh(1) is used to execute the at-job.

-k

Korn shell. ksh(1) is used to execute the at-job.

-s

Bourne shell. sh(1) is used to execute the at-job.

-f file

Specifies the path of a file to be used as the source of the at-job, instead of standard input.

-l

(The letter ell.) Reports all jobs scheduled for the invoking user if no at_job_id operands are specified. If at_job_ids are specified, reports only information for these jobs.

-m

Sends mail to the invoking user after the at-job has run, announcing its completion. Standard output and standard error produced by the at-job are mailed to the user as well, unless redirected elsewhere. Mail is sent even if the job produces no output.

If -m is not used, the job's standard output and standard error is provided to the user by means of mail, unless they are redirected elsewhere; if there is no such output to provide, the user is not notified of the job's completion.

-p project

Specifies under which project the at or batch job is run. When used with the -l option, limits the search to that particular project. Values for project is interpreted first as a project name, and then as a possible project ID, if entirely numeric. By default, the user's current project is used.

-q queuename

Specifies in which queue to schedule a job for submission. When used with the -l option, limits the search to that particular queue. Values for queuename are limited to the lower case letters a through z. By default, at-jobs are scheduled in queue a. In contrast, queue b is reserved for batch jobs. Since queue c is reserved for cron jobs, it can not be used with the -q option.

-r at_job_id

Removes the jobs with the specified at_job_id operands that were previously scheduled by the at utility.

-t time

Submits the job to be run at the time specified by the time option-argument, which must have the format as specified by the touch(1) utility.

OPERANDS

The following operands are supported:

at_job_id

The name reported by a previous invocation of the at utility at the time the job was scheduled.

timespec

Submit the job to be run at the date and time specified. All of the timespec operands are interpreted as if they were separated by space characters and concatenated. The date and time are interpreted as being in the timezone of the user (as determined by the TZ variable), unless a timezone name appears as part of time below.

In the "C" locale, the following describes the three parts of the time specification string. All of the values from the LC_TIME categories in the "C" locale are recognized in a case-insensitive manner.

time

The time can be specified as one, two or four digits. One- and two-digit numbers are taken to be hours, four-digit numbers to be hours and minutes. The time can alternatively be specified as two numbers separated by a colon, meaning hour:minute. An AM/PM indication (one of the values from the am_pm keywords in the LC_TIME locale category) can follow the time; otherwise, a 24-hour clock time is understood. A timezone name of GMT, UCT, or ZULU (case insensitive) can follow to specify that the time is in Coordinated Universal Time. Other timezones can be specified using the TZ environment variable. The time field can also be one of the following tokens in the "C" locale:

midnight

Indicates the time 12:00 am (00:00).

noon

Indicates the time 12:00 pm.

now

Indicate the current day and time. Invoking at now submits an at-job for potentially immediate execution (that is, subject only to unspecified scheduling delays).

date

An optional date can be specified as either a month name (one of the values from the mon or abmon keywords in the LC_TIME locale category) followed by a day number (and possibly year number preceded by a comma) or a day of the week (one of the values from the day or abday keywords in the LC_TIME locale category). Two special days are recognized in the "C" locale:

today

Indicates the current day.

tomorrow

Indicates the day following the current day.

If no date is given, today is assumed if the given time is greater than the current time, and tomorrow is assumed if it is less. If the given month is less than the current month (and no year is given), next year is assumed.

increment

The optional increment is a number preceded by a plus sign (+) and suffixed by one of the following: minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years. (The singular forms are also accepted.) The keyword next is equivalent to an increment number of + 1. For example, the following are equivalent commands:

---

at 2pm + 1 week
			at 2pm next week

USAGE

The format of the at command line shown here is guaranteed only for the "C" locale. Other locales are not supported for midnight, noon, now, mon, abmon, day, abday, today, tomorrow, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and next.

Since the commands run in a separate shell invocation, running in a separate process group with no controlling terminal, open file descriptors, traps and priority inherited from the invoking environment are lost.

Examples

Example 1: Using modifier tomorrow

$ at -m 0730 tomorrow
sort < file >outfile
<EOT>

Example 2: Redirecting Output

$ at now + 1 hour <<!
diff file1 file2 2>&1 >outfile | mailx mygroup
!           

batch

This sequence can be used at a terminal:

$ batch
sort <file >outfile
<EOT>

This sequence, which demonstrates redirecting standard error to a pipe, is useful in a command procedure (the sequence of output redirection specifications is significant):

$ batch <<!
diff file1 file2 2>&1 >outfile | mailx mygroup
!

Old News ;-)

Linux tip Job scheduling with cron and at

Sometimes you may need to run a job just once, rather than regularly. For this you use the at  command. The commands to be run are read from a file specified with the -f  option, or from stdin if -f  is not used. The -m  option sends mail to the user even if there is no stdout from the command. The -v  option displays the time at which the job will run before reading the job. The time is also displayed in the output.

Listing 5 shows an example of running the mycrontest.sh  script that you used earlier. Listing 6 shows the output that is mailed back to the user after the job runs. Notice that it is somewhat more compact than the corresponding output from the cron job.

Listing 5. Using the at command
 

[ian@lyrebird ~]$ at -f mycrontest.sh -v 10:25 Sat Jul 7 10:25:00 2007 job 5 at Sat Jul 7 10:25:00 2007

Listing 6. Job output from at
 

From ian@lyrebird.raleigh.ibm.com Sat Jul 7 10:25:00 2007 Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2007 10:25:00 -0400 From: Ian Shields <ian@lyrebird.raleigh.ibm.com> Subject: Output from your job 5 To: ian@lyrebird.raleigh.ibm.com It is now 10:25:00 on Saturday

 

Time specifications can be quite complex. Listing 7 shows a few examples. See the man page for at  or the file /usr/share/doc/at/timespec or a file such as /usr/share/doc/at-3.1.10/timespec, where 3.1.10 in this example is the version of the at  package.

Listing 7. Time values with the at command
 

[ian@lyrebird ~]$ at -f mycrontest.sh 10pm tomorrow job 14 at Sun Jul 8 22:00:00 2007 [ian@lyrebird ~]$ at -f mycrontest.sh 2:00 tuesday job 15 at Tue Jul 10 02:00:00 2007 [ian@lyrebird ~]$ at -f mycrontest.sh 2:00 july 11 job 16 at Wed Jul 11 02:00:00 2007 [ian@lyrebird ~]$ at -f mycrontest.sh 2:00 next week job 17 at Sat Jul 14 02:00:00 2007

 

Being nice

The nice  value for a job is a measure of how nice it is to other users. See our tutorial LPI exam 101 prep: GNU and UNIX commands for information on the nice  and renice  commands.

The at  command also has a -q  option. Increasing the queue increases the nice  value for the job. There is also a batch  command, which is similar to the at  command except that jobs are run only when the system load is low enough. See the man pages for more details on these features.

Sun Technology Forums - Cron jobs not running

Ok, I got it! The issue was within the pam.conf and we were missing the following line:

cron account required pam_projects.so.1

Thanks for the help!

OISec » Solaris 9's Crontab

After some research I found out that Solaris logs crontab messages to /var/cron/log (which is actually pretty predictable logging for Solaris). The log entries for the updating of the sunfreeware mirror looked something like this:

> CMD: /usr/local/bin/update-sunfreeware
> ftp 21022 c Fri Jul 30 06:00:00 2004
! bad user (ftp) Fri Jul 30 06:00:00 2004

So we are talking about a bad user here. Well actually the user is all there and running in /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow. But hey wait, the FTP account is locked. Well I found that normal behaviour, but guess what, crontab expects a password there, else the account is not good and is a bad user!

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Last modified: January 28, 2013