When you need to execute a script in a future date, you can use the simple ‘at’ command for that.

Table of Contents

Installation

If at is not already installed on your system, install the at package using your operating system package manager (apt, pacman, dnf, etc.). After installed, ensure ‘atd.service’ is started and enabled:

sudo systemctl enable --now atd.service

Usage

This is a simple example of how to use at to run a script (run.sh) at the next minute:

at -f run.sh now + 1 minute
  • -f: reads the job from file instead of standard input.
$ at -f run.sh now + 1 minute
warning: commands will be executed using /bin/sh
job 3 at Fri Oct 14 13:46:00 2022

As you can see, at syntax is:

at [options] <timespec>

Date/time format

There are several ways to define a datetime:

  • HH:MM: define the time of the day. If the time has passed, the next day is assumed.
  • AM/PM: you can suffix a time with AM or PM.
  • midnight/noon/teatime: to run the job at midnight (00:00), noon (12:00) or teatime (16:00).
  • month day: for example, january 25. You can also add the year after the day.
  • mmddYYYY, mm/dd/YYYY, dd.mm.YYYY or YYYY-mm-dd: Some examples are 12152022, 03/05/2022, 16.05.2022 and 2022-04-23. Defining the year with two digits is allowed.
  • now + number timeunit: this format is used in the first example. Allowed time units are minutes, hours, days and weeks (and their singular form).
  • today/tomorrow: suffix the time with these units to run the job today or tomorrow at the specified time, for example 15:00 tomorrow.

List jobs

atq lists user’s pending jobs. If executed as superuser, lists everybody’s jobs.

$ atq
7       Sat Oct 15 12:00:00 2022 a ricardo
10      Sat Oct 15 15:00:00 2022 a ricardo
5       Sun Dec 25 16:31:00 2022 a ricardo
  • First number is the job number, you will need it to delete the job.

Delete jobs

Run atrm <job number> to delete a job:

atrm 7

Allow or deny access to users

You can define which users can create jobs with at. If the /etc/at.allow exists, only usernames mentioned there are allowed. If the file does not exists, /etc/at.deny is checked, and every username not mentioned there is allowed. The content of /etc/at.allow and /etc/at.deny is the same, one line per username allowed or denied. Only the root user (or any user with superuser privileges) can read and write these files.

$ sudo head /etc/at.deny
alias
backup
bin
daemon
[output truncated]

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