I'm running 12.04 with a custom XML background (modification on Day of Ubuntu) that changes based on time of day. I've noticed that there's a significant delay between when the changes are scheduled to take place in the XML file and when they actually show up on the background. I've also noticed that when I resume from suspend I don't get the correct background image either. I've found that cycling the wallpaper manually will fix this, and I've written a script to automate the process.
If I execute the script manually it works fine. However, when I schedule the script to run in cron, cron doesn't change the background. To make sure that the script was being run properly by cron, I had it create a directory in my home folder after running the background change, and the directory is created successfully, so I know cron is running and executing the script.
My script:
#!/bin/bash
sleep 5
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri
file:///home/zak/Pictures/Wallpaper/DOU2.xml
sleep 1
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri
file:///home/zak/Pictures/Wallpaper/DOU.xml
sleep 1
mkdir /home/zak/iscronworking
exit
Is cron just not able to access gsettings
? The job is on my user crontab so it shouldn't be running as root.