Why putting a script in /etc/cron.hourly is not working?

As you've probably seen in the comments to your question, the cronjobs in /etc/cron.hourly (and the other, similar directories) are executed by run-parts. run-parts is a little picky about filenames. By default it doesn't execute files whose filenames contain anything other than (all of those from ASCII)

  • uppercase letters
  • lowercase letters
  • digits
  • underscores
  • dashes ("minus signs")

So if your script has a filename of for example "myscript.sh", it just is ignored, because run-parts does not like the dot.


One problem is that you're trying to run a graphical application (notify-send) from cron. That takes a little tweaking. You need to set XAUTHORITY and DISPLAY variables in the crontab so that it can connect to your running X session and you need to set XDG_RUNTIME_DIR so it can connect to your pulseaudio session. Unfortunately, these need to be set in the crontab itself, so you can't use /etc/cron.hourly. Instead, run crontab -e and add these lines:

DISPLAY=":0.0"
XAUTHORITY="/home/YOURUSERNAME/.Xauthority"
XDG_RUNTIME_DIR="/run/user/1000"

0 * * * * /path/to/script.sh

Change the value of XDG_RUNTIME_DIR to whatever is returned when you echo them from a terminal. On my system, this is:

$ echo $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
/run/user/1001

It will probably be the same on yours, but check first. Now, your script will run every hour and should work as expected.


A script ending with .sh is not executed in /etc/cron.hourly folder:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=308911
Links or binaries inside a directory handled by run-pars (like /etc/cron.daily) will not run if a period is part of their name.

rename the script

mv /etc/cron.hourly/Hour-sound.sh /etc/cron.hourly/Hour-sound

or put the script-call into 

/etc/crontab

which allows the .sh ending

Tags:

Cron

Scripts

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