cron visual output looks funny

Larry Hall (Cygwin) reply-to-list-only-lh@cygwin.com
Mon May 17 06:28:00 GMT 2010


On 5/14/2010 10:49 PM, Stephen Morton wrote:
> On Sun, 02 May 2010 16:25:07 +0200 Johannes Müller Wrote:
>> I installed and use cron on windows xp using cygwin. It works fine for
>> non-GUI applications, but for instance notepad does not seem to>start at
>> all. And a popup-window-script I wrote in python does appear and react to
>> userinput, but is not displayed
>> ...
>
> I think the reason you're getting no replies is because people are perplexed
> at why anybody would be trying to run GUI apps from cron. You see cron is
> _normally_ used to run background jobs that have no direct output or at most
> put a little bit of output to a logfile.

<snip>

> But generally, never ever graphical apps. I'm not saying it isn't possible;
> it sounds like you found something on a Ubuntu mailing list about it. But it
> is highly unusual.
>
> And people are going to jump to the conclusion --correct or not-- that you
> are doing something really stupid and they want no part in helping you. So
> perhaps you can indicate what you're trying to do that you think you want
> cron for. And if it's good, people will say "oh, I see" and try to help. And
> if it's not good, people will also probably try to help you by steering you
> to something more appropriate to your needs.

My take on this rather dated post is that this is something that's been
talked about allot on this list and people aren't generally interested in
rehashing what's already been said.  I could be wrong.

Here's a synopsis: While this is supposed to work for XP, MS no longer
supports interaction with the desktop from a service.

So in the general case, this isn't going to work whether or not it's a
seemingly valid thing for the OP's case.  Why it's not working for the OP
with XP, I can't say.

-- 
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
216 Dalton Rd.                          (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
> Q: Are you sure?
>> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
>>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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