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Tags: startup   autostart  
Link: πŸ” See Original Answer on Ask Ubuntu ⧉ πŸ”—

URL: https://askubuntu.com/q/991672
Title: How to run scripts on start up?
ID: /2018/01/03/How-to-run-scripts-on-start-up_
Created: January 3, 2018    Edited:  October 29, 2022
Upload: March 26, 2024    Layout:  post
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cron answer implemented different from top voted

This answer still uses cron but uses a different method than the top voted answer. This works since Ubuntu 16.04 but probably supported much sooner. It’s just that I started using cron to run jobs when computer boots up since 16.04.

When does cron run?

In comments someone asked β€œwhen do they run?”. You can tell in syslog / journalctl:

$ journalctl -b | grep cron
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien cron[919]: (CRON) INFO (pidfile fd = 3)
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien cron[919]: (CRON) INFO (Running @reboot jobs)
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien systemd[1]: Started Run anacron jobs.
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien anacron[949]: Anacron 2.3 started on 2018-01-02
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien anacron[949]: Normal exit (0 jobs run)
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien CRON[952]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien CRON[954]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien CRON[951]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien CRON[950]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien CRON[985]: (root) CMD (   /usr/local/bin/cron-reboot-cycle-grub-background)
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien CRON[954]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien cron[919]: sendmail: Cannot open smtp.gmail.com:587
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien CRON[952]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien cron[919]: sendmail: Cannot open smtp.gmail.com:587
Jan 02 16:54:40 alien CRON[950]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root

One thing to note is cron can email you status of jobs run and @reboot jobs run so early network manager and email won’t be running unless you put a sleep command into your script(s).

Where to put your scripts

Put your scripts in the directory /etc/cron.d:

$ ll /etc/cron.d
total 44
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Nov 26 19:53 ./
drwxr-xr-x 139 root root 12288 Dec 31 13:58 ../
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   244 Dec 28  2014 anacron
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   148 Feb 18  2017 cycle-grub-background
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   138 Mar  5  2017 display-auto-brightness
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   460 Nov 26 19:53 nvidia-hdmi-sound
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   102 Feb  9  2013 .placeholder
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   224 Nov 19  2016 touch-vmlinuz
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   700 Aug  5 11:15 turn-off-hyper-threading

What does a script look like?

Here are a couple of scripts I have setup to run each boot:

$ cat /etc/cron.d/cycle-grub-background 
SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin 
@reboot   root    /usr/local/bin/cron-reboot-cycle-grub-background

$ cat /etc/cron.d/touch-vmlinuz
SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
@reboot   root    touch "/boot/vmlinuz-"`uname -r`
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