Exemplary use case:
I would like to start Telegram Desktop periodically every 3 hours for 15 minutes, to check for newly incoming messages. After 15 minutes, the application should close again and re-launch after the next 3 hours.
Exemplary use case:
I would like to start Telegram Desktop periodically every 3 hours for 15 minutes, to check for newly incoming messages. After 15 minutes, the application should close again and re-launch after the next 3 hours.
Of course the very first thing that pops into the mind is to use cron
. Whether you use cron, or a small background script is mainly a matter of taste.
The advantage of cron is that it hooks up on an existing process (although a script adds, well, actually nothing to the processor load).
The advantage of a background script is that is more flexible; simply kill it and run it with other arguments if you'd like to change time- or other settings. You can also re- use it with other applications without having to do another setup, just a command is enough.
The script below can be run by the command (e.g.)
python3 <script> <command_to_run_application> <cycle_time> <application_run_time> force
Where the last argument, if set, forcefully kills the application. If not set, the application will close gracefully, to make sure possible changes etc. will not be lost.
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import subprocess
import time
import sys
force = False
args = sys.argv[1:]; app = args[0].replace("'", "")
proc = app.split()[0].split("/")[-1]
cycle = int(args[1])*60; run = int(args[2])*60
try:
if args[3] == "force":
force = True
except IndexError:
pass
def get_pid(proc_name):
try:
return subprocess.check_output(
["pgrep", proc_name]
).decode("utf-8").strip()
except subprocess.CalledProcessError:
pass
def kill(pid, force):
if force == False:
subprocess.Popen(["kill", "-s", "TERM", pid])
elif force == True:
subprocess.Popen(["kill", pid])
while True:
subprocess.Popen(["/bin/bash", "-c", app])
time.sleep(run)
pid = get_pid(proc)
if pid != None:
kill(pid, force)
time.sleep(cycle - run)
cycle_run.py
Run it with the command:
python3 /path/to/cycle_run.py <command> <cycle_time> <application_run_time> force
where:
<command>
is the command to run the application (without the --%u
-section, in my case, copied from the .desktop
file: /home/jacob/Downloads/Telegram/Telegram
)<cycle_time>
is the (total) cycle time in minutes (3 hours = 180 in your example)<application_run_time>
is the time the application should run in minutes (15 in your example)force
is an optional argument, to forcefully kill the application. Simply leave it away to gracefully kill the application.If you run an application with arguments, make sure you use quotes around the command to run the application, e.g.:
python3 /path/to/cycle_run.py 'gedit /home/jacob/Desktop/test.sh' 30 5
Starting and terminating applications periodically will often be needed only minimized and/or in tray. As requested by OP, a few remarks on that:
If an application offers starting up in tray from command line, simply use the argument to do so. In the case of Telgram
, the argument to use is:
-startintray
although the option seems not to work on all systems (it does on mine), as mentioned here. You will have to test in your situation.
If the application does not offer the command line option to startup minimized or in tray, I'd suggest using the (this) script in combination with the one here (I'd suggest the pid
- version), which will make it possible to startup the application minimized.
Edit your cron with crontab -e
and add this line into your crontab to run it as schedule job for every 3 hours
00 */3 * * * * ~/killtelegram.sh >/dev/null 2>&1
2.Open your terminal and type below command
touch ~/killtelegram.sh
chmod +x ~/killtelegram.sh
open killtelegram.sh with your favorate editor and write as below
#!/bin/bash
telegram &
sleep 15m
pkill telegram
Save and exit
thats it. It will open automatically for every 3 Hours and it will stay for 15 min and It will get killed.
cron
you can clearly start programs. You could also cron akill -15
, but it depends on the application whether it handles it as a gentle nudge to shut down, ignores it or just crashes.