On Thu, February 4, 2010 11:26 am, Geoff Galitz wrote: > >> I think the problem boils down to this : >> >> "How can I run a graphical application from crontab ?" >> >> I gave it a shot with a simple one (/usr/bin/gcalctool) and didn't >> succeed either. >> > > > > I think if you did something like this: > > ---------- > > #!/bin/sh > > # set DISPLAY > export DISPLAY="localhost:0" > > # send the message > /usr/bin/xmessage -timeout 120 "This is my message" > > # exit cleanly > exit 0 > > --------- > > > You'd be ok. Run that as a script, making changes for your system where > appropriate and then run that script from cron. Cron makes very few > assumptions about your environment, your PATHS and other environmental > variables are not getting set. If you run this a script suing "#!/bin/sh" > you should get a default environment as defined by your installation. The following worked fine for me on a stock 64-bit CentOS 5 box: 17 11 * * * export DISPLAY=:0 && /usr/bin/xmessage -nearmouse "test message" However, that was executed from a non-root crontab and the same user was the owner of the X Windows session at the time. When I tried to run the same thing from root's crontab a minute later, it failed because root could not open the display. Executing "xhost +" did the trick, so you might want to take a look at display permissions. Marko