how to start boxee in a script or crontab???

[maluka66]

I'd like to setup a crontab job that will periodically start Boxee. Given that it is not a final release there are some issues and it sometimes crashes.

What I want to do is run this job on a regular basis (~ every couple of mins) to start boxee. I have the command to start boxee from a terminal window in Ubuntu, but when i set it up to run in a crontab job, it just doesn't start fully.

I see that the log file is trying to start the application and it doesn't give an error and just stops after a few steps and boxee never starts.

Any help/suggestions on how to run this from a crontab job would be appreciated. Thanks.

[DPK]

Just out of curiosity, why do you want to repeatedly start Boxee every few minutes?

[sfsmiley]

Just out of curiosity, why do you want to repeatedly start Boxee every few minutes?

i wonder if he has a cron script to check if boxee is running, and if not start it back up. i would rather find out why it was crashing instead of a workaround though..... i cant remember the last time boxee actually crashed for me, a few lockup here and there but no crashes.

[sdnick484]

I agree with sfsmiley, I believe the better approach is to identify what is causing the crashes.

However to address the original poster's question, your best bet is to create a script which:
sets the DISPLAY environment variable (this is critical)
checks if boxee is already running
executes it if it's not

Be sure to make the script executable, and add it to your crontab at whatever frequency you feel is necessary. Alternatively, creating a watchdog daemon or a wrapper script for launching Boxee (eg. one that sets the PID), might be good ideas and a little more efficient.

[pti13]

I need it to ))))
Any one knows.?

[bano]

Easy script

Sorry i haven't check it because at the moment i have unistall boxee for a problem but i think should be works...I hope (or you can easily adjust this raw script) :P

#!/bin/bash

###var
TIME='60' #set time (seconds)
SBOXEE='BOXEE' #set service name in ps
FILE_LOG='log'
PATH='/opt/boxee/run-boxee-desktop'
###

i=1
while [ $i = 1 ]; do
if ps ax | grep -v grep | grep $SBOXEE > /dev/null
then
echo "ok"
else
echo `date` >> $FILE_LOG &&  $PATH >> $FILE_LOG 2>&1
fi
sleep $TIME
done

in the file $FILE_LOG you can find the log and the output errors.

EDIT: Ooops I had forgotten: be sure to chmod +x the file and if you want to start script at the boot, copy the file in /etc/init.d and then use update-rc.d ($man update-rc.d #for more info) or insert the script in /etc/rc.local

[dougdeep]

Problem is, often the video crashes in Boxee (app disappears), but sounds continues, and Boxee is still running. Then you have to kill the process to get it to end entirely. How do you script that? Maybe there's some related event you can detect.

But most Boxee crashes I have are not total crashes, just some part of Boxee crashes.

[dc2447]

while [ /bin/true ]
do
        killall Boxee
        /opt/boxee/Boxee
        sleep 2
done

No need for crontab