Automating tasks in Ubuntu is a great way to save time and energy. There are a few different ways to do this, and the best method for you will depend on the tasks you want to automate and your level of comfort with using the terminal. In this article, we’ll show you how to use some basic terminal commands to automate tasks in Ubuntu.
If you’re not familiar with the terminal, don’t worry! We’ll walk you through each step so you can get started automating your tasks right away.
1. Open the terminal.
2. Type in the following command to view a list of your currently running processes:
ps aux
3. Take a look at the output of this command. You should see a list of all the processes that are currently running on your system, including the terminal itself.
4. To kill a process, type in the following command, replacing PROCESSNAME with the name of the process you want to kill:
killall PROCESSNAME
For example, to kill the terminal process, you would type in the following command:
killall gnome-terminal
5. To automate a task, you can use the cron utility. Cron is a time-based job scheduler that allows you to schedule jobs to be executed at specific times or intervals.
To use cron, you first need to edit the crontab file. The crontab file is a text file that contains a list of commands that are to be executed by cron.
To edit the crontab file, type in the following command:
crontab -e
6. This will open the crontab file in a text editor. If you’ve never used a text editor before, don’t worry! We’ll walk you through the basics.
7. To add a new job to the crontab file, simply type in the following command on a new line:
For example, to run the ls command every hour, you would type in the following:
0 * * * * ls
8. Once you’ve added all the jobs you want to the crontab file, simply save and close the file. Cron will automatically start running the jobs you’ve added to the file.
That’s it! You’ve now learned how to use the terminal to automate tasks in Ubuntu.
Other related questions:
How do I automate a task in Linux?
There are many ways to automate tasks in Linux. One way is to use a tool like Crontab to schedule tasks to run at certain times. Another way is to use a tool like Ansible to automate tasks using playbooks.
Does Linux have a task scheduler?
Yes, Linux has a task scheduler. The Linux kernel is responsible for scheduling tasks, and it uses a variety of algorithms to determine when and how to schedule them.
How do I schedule a cron job to run a script on Ubuntu 20?
Open the terminal and type:
crontab -e
This will open up the crontab file in a text editor.
Scroll to the bottom of the file and add the following line:
@reboot /path/to/script.sh
Save and close the file.
Reboot your computer and the script will run automatically.
Bibliography
- How to Schedule Tasks on Ubuntu 20.04 Using Crontab – VITUX
- How to Schedule and Automate Tasks with Crontab in Ubuntu
- How To Use Cron to Automate Tasks on Ubuntu 18.04
- How to Automate Regular Tasks with Cron on Ubuntu 20.04
- How to automate tasks with CRON on Ubuntu – Medium
- How I use Bash to automate tasks on Linux – Opensource.com
- How to Use Cron to Automate Linux Jobs on Ubuntu 20.04