From: mbriceno@netcom.com (Marc Briceno)
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 94 15:00:17 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Running regularly
Message-ID: <199402042300.PAA18374@mail.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Xenon askend:
>> Before I start throwing out ideas that I'm sure aren't new to readers here,
>> I have a simple question that perhaps I should post to comp.unix.questions
>> or comp.lang.perl, but.... Can I, and how would I, get a perl script to
>> kick in and send out mail every few minutes when I am NOT logged in. Is this
>> possible on Netcom?

Hal answered:
>Most public Unix systems will not let you do this, in my experience.
>The two Unix commands which usually give you the ability to run programs
>at regular intervals are "at" and "crontab".  You can read the man pages
>and try running these to see if they are enabled for you.

Netcom has a "policy against detached processes because of the load they
put on the system and therfore 'crontab' and 'at' disabled for all
users.(Netcom support)" To make your life even harder they kill all your
processes upon hangup.
Here is (half) the workaround:

They forgot to disable "sleep" and they also didn't disable "nohup."
You can simply write a script that sleeps for 30 min, executes your program
and goes back to sleep. Call it with "nohup script &" and you're in
business.

The next problem that must be addressed is the auto-logout upon >14min of
inactivity on the modem level that Netcom imposes on you. There is a simple
2 line command that you can add to your .login file to disable the
auto-logout. I saw it once posted in one of the Netcom newsgroups, but I
lost it. Perhaps you might post the question there. I would not advise to
ask Netcom support for it... Some of the messages responding to the above
post talked about "supending the account for intentionally disabling, blah,
blah" 8-)

Good luck,

-- Marc Briceno <mbriceno@netcom.com>
   PGP public key by finger