I am trying to start kmail via cron but I can't get kmail to start, here is what
cron looks like

mit@Titan:~$ crontab -l
# Stop kmail
0 5 * * * killall -9 kmail
# start kmail
15 5 * * * /usr/bin/kmail --check
# This file was written by KCron. Copyright (c) 1999, Gary Meyer
# Although KCron supports most crontab formats, use care when editing.
# Note: Lines beginning with "#\" indicates a disabled task.

On the start Kmail line I have tried the following wording

kmail
"kmail"
'kmail'
/usr/bin/kmail
kmail -caption "%c" %i %m (this is the command from the start menu kmail icon)

Basicly kmail is killed at 5:00am everyday and I want kmail to start again at
5:15am everyday, but kmail won't start.

I am using KDE 3.5.10 and Kmail 1.9.9 on Mepis 8 (Debian Lenny)

The reason for this is that my PC runs 24\7 and I collect from several e-mail
accounts, but sometime one of them goes awol and I won't get any mail through.
But when I close down kmail or reboot and then restart kmail there is a deluge
of mail from that particular box

Any suggestion??

Tim

iirc the problem is cron executes in a non windowed environment (not in your kde session) so you can't run kde/gnome apps from cron but you can run them from kalarm (assuming there's an existing kde session for it to execute the program in). Just create a command alarm at 5:15am and set recurrence to daily.

Thanks Google, I installed and setup kalarm and kmail was up and running ok this morning.

I assume the fact that I can type kmail into konsole and it will start kmail is the fact that konsole is running within a KDE enviroment and as you suggest cron is working outside of the kde enviroment?


Tim

The first graphical session you start is normally available with Ctrl+Alt+F7. You can switch to terminals with Ctrl+Alt+F1,F2,F3 up to F6. Ctrl+Alt+F8 would be a new graphical session, if you start one.
If you execute this on a terminal you can access through Ctrl+Alt+F2 or one of the other F-keys the application will start on your graphical session:

Code: Select all

export DISPLAY=:0.0
kmail

In Konsole the environment variable DISPLAY is set. You can see this by executing

Code: Select all

echo $DISPLAY

in a Konsole window.
If you use the following as cron command for KMail it should start in your graphical session:

Code: Select all

bash -c "DISPLAY=:0.0 /usr/bin/kmail --check"


Thanks Jan, that worked perfectly

Tim

No problem

Could you mark the topic as solved please (press the green hook at the post which solved your problem)? Thanks.