daily-runner

daily-runner is an application that allows you to run other command line applications in a "daily" manner even when a computer is not running 24/7. The command will be run if more than 24 hours have passed since the last execution. A preferred run time can also be set that overrides the 24h mode and will always run if the system is up at this preferred time. It is designed to easily run as a non system application with minimal installation by a typical non-root desktop linux user.

Quick start

• Grab the latest binary release from releases and put it somewhere in your home directory. $HOME/bin is a traditional location for user-level executables. Alternatively you can get the source and use go install daily-runner this will put the executable in your $GOPATH/bin folder.

• Optionally run daily-runner with your command line flags from the command line for example for my case

gaganis@i7:~$ $GOPATH/bin/daily-runner -profile backup_i7_s3 -command "duply backup_i7_s3 backup" -preferredTime "03:00:00" 
Starting daily-runner with configuration:
{Profile:backup_i7_s3 Command:duply backup_i7_s3 backup Interval:4m0s HasPreferredRunTime:true PreferredRunTime:03:00:00}
Please see logs at:  /home/gaganis/.local/share/daily-runner/backup_i7_s3/log/daily-runner.log

• To make daily-runner start when you login into your system you can create a file in $HOME/.config/autostart named <something>.desktop For example my desktop file for the above profile & command daily-runner-backup-s3.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=/home/gaganis/GolandProjects/bin/daily-runner -profile backup_i7_s3 -command "duply backup_i7_s3 backup" -preferredTime "03:00:00" 
Hidden=false
NoDisplay=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Name[en_US]=daily runner duply s3 backup
Name=daily runner duply s3 backup
Comment[en_US]=
Comment=

• Alternatively you can use the gnome UI app Startup Applications accessible from your distro's launcher

Usage

Usage of /home/gaganis/GolandProjects/bin/daily-runner:
  -command string
        The command that runner will execute (default "echo 'daily-runner has run echo printing this text'")
  -interval duration
        The interval that daily-runner will use to check if it needs to run. Can accept values acceptable to golang time.ParseDuration function (default 4m0s)
  -now
        Run the command immediately. Previous runs are not taken into account. This option also disables process locking, so multiple processes can run at the same time.
  -preferredTime string
        Set a preferred time for the runner to run the command. This time overrides the daily logic and the command will always run if the system is up at that time.
  -profile string
        Profile to use. Defaults to 'default' (default "default")

Features

24h run algorithm

Every time daily-runner executes the command it tracks the time and if more than 24 hours have passed since the last run.

log files

Logs are saved in $HOME/.local/share/daily-runner/<profile>/log in the following files:

• daily-runner.log
• command-output.log

Preferred run time

A preferred run time can be set via the command line flag -preferredTime ie 01:00:00, if daily-runner is running at this time the command will be executed irrespective of when the last run was.

Please note that daily-run does not attempt to run the backup at exactly the time. It can be up to time adding the interval setting. For the default 4min interval this means that the command can run from 01:00:00 up to 01:04:10.

Configurable check interval

daily-runner checks in a loop whether the command needs to run. This loop by default sleeps 4min between checks to conserve power. This can be adjusted via command line flag -interval.

Profiles A profile can be set via the -profile command line flag. This

profile allows multiple instances to run for different commands independently each with it's it's own logging and data about runs. If no profile is set default is used.

Single process running via pid file locking

Locking is implemented via a pid file so that no more than one instance of daily-runner is running for each profile.

Immediate execution

daily-runner can be instructed to run the command immediately using -now. In this case previous runs aren't taken into account. This option also disables process locking, so it is possible for multiple processes to run at the same time.

Motivation

I have been using duply at work with great success, even used it once to migrate to a new computer, and I wanted to also setup backups for my home computers.

At work was running it via cron at lunchtime but for my home computers which I use randomly & sporadically I needed to find a different way to run it. I looked at fcron & anacron and I found them hard to install requiring system changes(fcron an compilation from sources) plus a steep learning & setup curve to reach my use case.

Gnome's deja dup is also an app that tries to solve the overall problem of home/personal computer backup and has the feature of "daily", "weekly" running of backup for systems that are not always online. It's design imposes many defaults, so I was not able to set it up successfully for my use cases.