mpledger@cti1.UUCP (Mark Pledger) (01/08/91)
The following is a (very) short list of respondents to the following request I made earlier: >Does anyone know of a PD program similar to crontab that runs under >MS-DOS? If so could they please tell me where I can get it, either >through ftp or a BBS. ------------------------------------------------------ 1) From Greg Presedo-Floyd Both PCTOOLS in Washington state and Norton Utilites have "schedulers" in their latest revs. They are not PD. They are (I think) TSRs that use pop up windows. I too (if I understand you) would like a more "text file" based option. ------------------------------------------------------ 2) From Phillip McReynolds Try downloading Waffle ver 1.63 from Simtel: PD1:<MSDOS.BBS>WAF163.ZIP It has a scheduler which exits the bbs (more on that in a sec.) to execute a list of programs at various times which you have placed in a file called /waffle/system/schedule. Very nice. Unfortunately, you have to run the bbs in order to get this feature to work. BTW, I assume you're using some sort of multi-tasking DOS extender like DESQview since the cron program would take precedence and stop all current processing when it executed its crontabs. I use the DESQview + waffle arrangement to do various things in the wee hours of the morning: poll my neighbor uucp sites, delete all *.bak files on the system, perform disk checks, archive newsgroups, and so on. ------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: From the few responses I got, I gather there is no program which emulates cron for an MS-DOS machine. I am therefore going to write my own. I realize that since MS-DOS is inherently a single user, single task OS some features of cron will not be able to be implemented. My goals are to set up a dayly, weekly, monthly, yearly, or specified event to happen based upon a given crontab file. I will probably use the autoexec.bat file to check and run the crontab. Since my machine is a 386, I also have use of the timers which will allow me to schedule events based upon the RTC. If anybody is interested in providing suggestions or assistance to me, I'd be more than happy. Thanks to those who respondent to my question. -- Sincerely, Mark Pledger -------------------------------------------------------------------------- CTI | (703) 685-5434 [voice] 2121 Crystal Drive | (703) 685-7022 [fax] Suite 103 | Arlington, VA 22202 | mpledger@cti.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------
theall@rm105serve.sas.upenn.edu (George A. Theall) (01/08/91)
In article <365@cti1.UUCP> mpledger@cti1.UUCP (Mark Pledger) writes: >>Does anyone know of a PD program similar to crontab that runs under >>MS-DOS? If so could they please tell me where I can get it, either >>through ftp or a BBS. ... >SUMMARY: > >From the few responses I got, I gather there is no program which emulates >cron for an MS-DOS machine. I am therefore going to write my own. I (I guess you never got the mail I sent.) Yes, there is a version of cron for DOS. It's a shareware package written by Tron Hvaring from way up north in Narvik Norway (beautiful place, btw). The author claims it implements all the features of cron under unix that "make sense" under DOS. I got my copy from SATALINK bbs (+1 215 364 3324) rather recently. I see it hasn't made it to SIMTEL yet. If there's enough demand for it, I'll contact Keith and arrange to upload it there. (Of course, if you want to knock yourself out and write your own, go right ahead. :-) George --- theall@rm105serve.sas.upenn.edu Dept. of Economics theall@ssctemp.sas.upenn.edu Univ. of Pennsylvania gtheall@penndrls.upenn.edu Philadelphia, PA 19104
valley@uchicago (Doug Dougherty) (01/09/91)
mpledger@cti1.UUCP (Mark Pledger) writes: >The following is a (very) short list of respondents to the following >request I made earlier: >>Does anyone know of a PD program similar to crontab that runs under >>MS-DOS? If so could they please tell me where I can get it, either >>through ftp or a BBS. There is AT-TIME. I can mail it to you if needed. It's very simple, but it works. TSR (doesn't require DesqView or anything like that)