Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

Proper list for 'at' command questions?

23 views
Skip to first unread message

Zembower, Kevin

unread,
Aug 24, 2006, 10:41:45 AM8/24/06
to help-gn...@gnu.org
Can anyone suggest the proper mail list to ask questions regarding the
'at' batch commands? 'at' is such a short, common word that I'm having a
hard time searching to find the proper group to ask a user-type
question.

Thanks for your help and advice.

-Kevin

Kevin Zembower
Internet Services Group manager
Center for Communication Programs
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Johns Hopkins University
111 Market Place, Suite 310
Baltimore, Maryland 21202
410-659-6139


Karl Berry

unread,
Aug 24, 2006, 6:03:26 PM8/24/06
to kzem...@jhuccp.org, help-gn...@gnu.org
Can anyone suggest the proper mail list to ask questions regarding the
'at' batch commands?

I am not sure if there is any GNU version of `at' yet. You should be
able to use whatever package commands your system uses to discover what
package it belongs to, and then the package information should tell
where it came from. For instance, on my Red Hat system, rpm -qli
gives a bunch of information about it. (It seems RH itself might have
written it; not sure.)

HTH,
karl


Zembower, Kevin

unread,
Aug 25, 2006, 2:55:52 PM8/25/06
to help-gn...@gnu.org
Karl, thanks for your suggestion. On my Debian system, 'at' seems to be
its own package:
amanda@cn2:~$ aptitude show at
Package: at
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 3.1.8-11
Priority: important
Section: admin
Maintainer: Ryan Murray <rmu...@debian.org>
Uncompressed Size: 209k
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.4-4), mail-transport-agent
Description: Delayed job execution and batch processing
At and batch read shell commands from standard input storing them as a
job to be scheduled for execution in the future.

Use
at to run the job at a specified time
batch to run the job when system load levels permit

amanda@cn2:~$

I guess my next step is to write to the package maintainer or author,
even though I try to avoid writing to an individual to ask questions
like this.

Thanks, again, for your help and advice.

-Kevin

s. keeling

unread,
Aug 27, 2006, 7:54:35 PM8/27/06
to
Karl Berry <ka...@freefriends.org>:

> Can anyone suggest the proper mail list to ask questions regarding the
> 'at' batch commands?
>
> I am not sure if there is any GNU version of `at' yet. You should

I'm not actually arguing your points. I'm merely supplying additional
info. HTH. This is Debian stable/Sarge:

(0) heretic /home/keeling_ cd /usr/share/doc/at
(0) heretic /usr/share/doc/at_ less copyright

--------------------------------------
This package was debianized by its author Thomas Koenig
<ig...@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>, taken over and re-packaged first by Martin
Schulze <jo...@debian.org> and then by Siggy Brentrup <b...@winnegan.de>,
and then taken over by Ryan Murray <rmu...@debian.org>.

This may be considered the experimental upstream source, and since there
doesn't seem to be any other upstream source, the only upstream source.

Copyright: 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 (c) Thomas Koenig
1993 (c) David Parsons

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; version 2 dated June, 1991.

(etc.).
--------------------------------------

So, it's Gnu.

> able to use whatever package commands your system uses to discover what
> package it belongs to, and then the package information should tell
> where it came from. For instance, on my Red Hat system, rpm -qli
> gives a bunch of information about it. (It seems RH itself might have
> written it; not sure.)

On Debian-ish systems:

(0) heretic /home/keeling_ aptitude show at

--------------------------------------


Package: at
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 3.1.8-11
Priority: important
Section: admin
Maintainer: Ryan Murray <rmu...@debian.org>
Uncompressed Size: 209k
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.4-4), mail-transport-agent
Description: Delayed job execution and batch processing
At and batch read shell commands from standard input storing them as a job to be
scheduled for execution in the future.

Use
at to run the job at a specified time
batch to run the job when system load levels permit

--------------------------------------

And for the OP:

xman -notopbox -bothshown &

results in a point and click interface to the manpages. Enjoy. :-)


--
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(*) http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling Linux Counter #80292
- - http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html Please, don't Cc: me.
Spammers! http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling/emails.html

Karl Berry

unread,
Aug 27, 2006, 8:47:42 PM8/27/06
to kee...@spots.ab.ca, help-gn...@gnu.org
This may be considered the experimental upstream source, and since there
doesn't seem to be any other upstream source, the only upstream source.

Meaning, the Debian package is the "upstream" source?
And Ryan Murray is the current maintainer?

it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; version 2 dated June, 1991.

(etc.).
--------------------------------------

So, it's Gnu.

By "GNU", I meant a package officially dubbed as part of the GNU system.
Of course there is a lot of software released under the GPL which are
not GNU packages, and I believe this is one of them.

In any case, thanks for the specific info, I am glad to know :).

Best,
karl


s. keeling

unread,
Sep 4, 2006, 10:19:02 PM9/4/06
to
Karl Berry <ka...@freefriends.org>:
> kee...@spots.ab.ca:

> > So, it's Gnu.
>
> By "GNU", I meant a package officially dubbed as part of the GNU system.
> Of course there is a lot of software released under the GPL which are
> not GNU packages, and I believe this is one of them.

Sorry for the confusion. Anything licenced under the GPL (for me) is
Gnu. "at" is GPL licenced software (as far as I can tell).

btw, I think "officially dubbed as part of the GNU system" is a red
herring. Whether it's GPL is what counts (released under the
conditions of the Gnu Public Licence). HTH.

Paul Jarc

unread,
Sep 4, 2006, 11:28:45 PM9/4/06
to kee...@spots.ab.ca, help-gn...@gnu.org
"s. keeling" <kee...@spots.ab.ca> wrote:
> Anything licenced under the GPL (for me) is Gnu.

If the license is what matters to you, then you can talk generally
about "GPL software" without the confusion that would result from
saying "GNU software", when that's not really what you mean.

> btw, I think "officially dubbed as part of the GNU system" is a red
> herring. Whether it's GPL is what counts (released under the
> conditions of the Gnu Public Licence). HTH.

For some purposes, that's true. For others - such as finding the
proper list for questions :) - the license is more or less
irrelevant. Since anyone can apply the GPL to their own work, knowing
that a program is under the GPL doesn't tell you anything about who
maintains it.


paul


0 new messages