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I am trying to create a cron job that sends a notification via notify-send.

I am currently trying this:

*/2 * * * * DISPLAY=:0 DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:path=/run/user/$(id -u)/bus /usr/bin/notify-send "test"

which is working if I just run it from a terminal.

I've also tried setting

XAUTHORITY=/home/munhunger/.Xauthority

I have a similar crontab that runs a shell script with the same variables that is printing to a log file, so I know that the crontab is working. But still, no notifications are showing up.

Does anyone have any idea of what might be wrong?

I am running with Ubuntu 17.10 with i3 on top

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  • Set XDG_SESSION_COOKIE as well. And check your DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS for a valid value.
    – Ipor Sircer
    Aug 14, 2018 at 10:50
  • my DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS seems to be valid... never seen the XDG_SESSION_COOKIE before. Do you have any suggestion as to what to set it to?
    – munHunger
    Aug 14, 2018 at 10:53
  • my DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS='unix:abstract=/tmp/dbus-idumFnhFQ6,guid=484c45028754af8abc0cbc995b72642b'. Are you sure you have more simple value?
    – Ipor Sircer
    Aug 14, 2018 at 11:13
  • Well, I am not entirely sure. but running printenv my DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS looks like that
    – munHunger
    Aug 14, 2018 at 12:22

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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I run i3 on Ubuntu 18.04. This is how I solve it:

* * * * * XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/$(id -u) notify-send Hey "this is dog!"

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  • 3
    I tried dozens of suggestions to fix this issue and this is the only one that worked for me. Thanks.
    – dain
    Feb 20, 2019 at 21:46
  • 1
    Thanks - this helped me out as well. I opted to export this variable in the shell script I'm running, to keep my crontab clean.
    – Try431
    Aug 18, 2019 at 17:24

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