[ubuntu-uk] 'Simple' cron job help...

[Josh Blacker]

Thanks for the responses so far - I knew it wouldn't be as simple as
it sounds! I've had only a little play so far, and am out for the rest
of the day (making the most of the weather while it lasts), but will
get stuck in tonight and let you know how I'm getting on. I think I'll
take it one step at a time, starting with the e-mailing!

On 8/3/07, Tony Arnold <tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
> Josh,
>
> Josh Blacker wrote:
> > Being a slight newbie, I'd appreciate some direction with this!
> >
> > I have an open office file that I'm constantly updating and sharing
> > with a friend. Emailing it to him every so often is a chore - what I
> > want is a cron script to do this for me, say every evening. Any ideas?
> > [As he's on a mac without oo.org, ideally it would save it as a pdf
> > first...]
>
> This is reasonably simple provided you have a few things set up first.
> To send mail from a script you either need a perl script as previously
> suggested, or you could install an MTA (mail transport agent) such
> postfix and a command line client such as mail or mutt.
>
> The MTA should be configured to use a 'smart host', i.e., all outgoing
> mail is sent to the mail router of your ISP.
>
> There are command line options to mail and mutt for sending a message
> and including a file as an attachment.
>
> Once you have that, then use 'crontab -e' to edit your crontab entry. I
> suggest you put the mail commands in a script and invoke the script from
> cron.
>
> The bit I don't know how to do is to convert an OO.org file to PDF from
> a script. Maybe someone else can chime in with this part.
>
> Are you both modifying this document? Would a server running CVS or SVN
> (subversion) be an alternative way of doing it? Maybe that's getting
> more complicated than it needs to be.
>
> Regards,
> Tony.
> --
> Tony Arnold, IT Security Coordinator, University of Manchester,
> IT Services Division, Kilburn Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL.
> T: +44 (0)161 275 6093, F: +44 (0)870 136 1004, M: +44 (0)773 330 0039
> E: tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk, H: http://www.man.ac.uk/Tony.Arnold
>
> --
> ubuntu-uk at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk
> https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
>


-- 
Josh Blacker
http://jerichokb.wordpress.com/