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I'm trying to run some commands upon every system boot in cronjob but it doesn't seem to be working, so far i have installed cron in Arch, enabled and started it with

systemctl enable cronie
systemctl start cronie

Then i went into a new crontab using

crontab -e

And added the following lines:

@reboot /bin/xbindkeys
@reboot /bin/setxkbmap -layout gb

I need these two commands to run on startup ever time, the first command is to start xbindkeys, and the second is to set my keyboard layout to GB layout. When i rebooted my system the crontab didn't seem to do anything, id appreciate if i can get some help, Thanks!

EDIT: Here is the output of:

journalctl -xe | grep CRON

Aug 26 14:30:48 archlinux crond[329]: (CRON) STARTUP (1.5.5)
Aug 26 14:30:48 archlinux crond[329]: (CRON) INFO (Syslog will be used instead of sendmail.)
Aug 26 14:30:48 archlinux crond[329]: (CRON) INFO (RANDOM_DELAY will be scaled with factor 5% if used.)
Aug 26 14:30:48 archlinux crond[329]: (CRON) INFO (running with inotify support)
Aug 26 14:30:49 archlinux CROND[423]: (user1) CMD (/bin/xbindkeys)
Aug 26 14:30:49 archlinux CROND[424]: (user1) CMD (/bin/setxkbmap -layout gb)
Aug 26 14:30:49 archlinux CROND[348]: (user1) CMDOUT (Cannot open display "default display")
Aug 26 14:30:49 archlinux CROND[348]: pam_unix(crond:session): session closed for user user1
Aug 26 14:30:50 archlinux CROND[349]: pam_unix(crond:session): session closed for user user1
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  • Apart from the fact that these commands look like an XY-problem, my best bet is that the cron job is executed too soon (of at all). Did you check the systemd journal?
    – rexkogitans
    Aug 25, 2020 at 19:42
  • I have edited my answer with the output of journal -xe | grep CRON
    – printf
    Aug 26, 2020 at 13:40

1 Answer 1

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-1

It seems you're using the wrong tool for the job here; instead of cron, you could put a script in /etc/init.d. If you're on Debian, you can find some help at /etc/init.d/README.

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  • im on Arch Linux
    – printf
    Aug 26, 2020 at 13:32
  • -1 OP uses systemd, not System V.
    – rexkogitans
    Aug 26, 2020 at 14:59

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