Question on at and atq commands

[Brian Kelsay]

So a one time backup job may be put here or a scheduled reboot?  After the job completes with at 
does it just disappear?  Or could you dredge it up and use it again at some later date?  With cron 
you could just comment out a job you created but don't want  to run anymore and then uncomment to 
reactivate.   I think I have made a cron job that was to run once a week, say at midnight, but I 
only really wanted it once ever.  Then I would go in and comment it out the next day.

For what Jason commented, couldn't they add a character like the @ that causes cron to run once and 
then comment out the line?  Or how about, run on a specific date 02/12/2004 at 5:23am and then 
comment out.
Just a thought.

Brian Kelsay

>>> "John Geiger" <> 02/12/04 11:07AM >>>
 
cron and at were both installed with RH9 server which we use here for training purposes. Both have 
been around for a long, long time.
 
As for the differences, cron is for repetitive scheduling while at is for one 'one time' execution. 
In other words, if you want something to run more than once, use cron. I would agree that at is 
rarely used but it is part of Unix and Linux distros.
 
>> Jason Clinton <> 02/12/04 09:57AM >>>
cat /var/spool/at/atspool

atd seems like a really inadequate piece of software, though. I wish
there were a version of cron that did it all.