How can I schedule a nightly reboot?

Question

I'm having some periodic issues running a particular application, XBMC. If I use XBMC regularly I don't seem to have any issues but if I leave it unattended for more than about 12 hours I need to reboot to get it working again.

I know a scheduled reboot is NOT the answer but until I can figure out the problem I need to schedule a reboot each morning so my wife can use it if I'm away and it doesn't get thrown out the window :)

Any takers?

Answer 1

I'd use cron (should already be installed):

Edit crontab:

sudo crontab -e

The first time you might have to choose your preferred editor (like nano)

Insert a line like

0 4 * * * /sbin/shutdown -r +5

at the bottom. Explanation:
m h dom mon dow command
minute hour dayOfMonth Month dayOfWeek commandToRun
so the line
0 4 * * * /sbin/shutdown -r +5
would reboot your system every day at 4:00am.

Ctrl+x - y - enter should get you out of crontab (if using nano)

Edit: you might have to run crontab -e as root, because shutdown needs root
Edit2: changed now to +5, thx poolie
Edit3: changed to /sbin/shutdown

Answer 2

Adding this to /etc/cron.daily/zz-reboot should work:

#!/bin/sh
shutdown -r now

And sudo chmod a+x /etc/cron.daily/zz-reboot. The "zz" prefix will force it to run last out of all the other scripts in that directory. Check /etc/crontab to see what time of day that will actually happen:

grep daily /etc/crontab | awk '{print $2 ":" $1}'

If that won't work, then a "regular" cron entry can work too, via sudo crontab -e

MINUTE HOUR * * * shutdown -r now

And finally, if you want to just do one-off reboots, you can use at:

echo "shutdown -r now" | sudo at 04:30

Answer 3

You should create a script using the directions given by Kees Cook...

You can just copy and paste the information below in any text editor and create the zz-reboot file in the directory suggested.

After that just remember to right click on the file and assign it execution permission. If you feel like doing in using terminal just:

sudo chmod +x /etc/cron.daily/zz-reboot

To understand better what you're doing remember that in etc folder you generally find configuration files and there you can find cron.hourly, cron.daily and other cron folders. Cron takes care of executing applications and script at a certain time.

If you want to be strict about the reboot time just digit

sudo crontab -e

so you can edit the croontab for the root user.

If you feel better doing it graphically you can install from the Software Center gnome-schedule. If you want to modify the gnome-schedule for root user ensure that you run it from terminal:

gksudo gnome-schedule

Have fun playing aroud! :)

ps great point sBlatt! I was wondering if there's any way to force cron.daily execution time manually