如何在Mac OSX中使用crontab运行RScript

Question

I have searched around on how to do this on here and none have really solved my problem. Partially because i do not understand what is going on....unfortunately

I have an Rscript I am trying to schedule to run every day called: JASON.r

the code inside the script is the following:

setwd("/Volumes/3TB/")
install.packages("quantmod");library("quantmod")
getSymbols("AAPL")
write.csv(AAPL,"/Volumes/3TB/AAPL.csv")
quit(save='no')

I have found THIS PAGE on how to do so, but i have been not been successful. What I do is open terminal and type:

Jason-Guevaras-iMac:~ rimeallthetime$ sudo crontab -e

for which it returns the following:

crontab: no crontab for root - using an empty one

~                                                                               
~                                                                               
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~                                                                               
~                                                                               
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"/tmp/crontab.fwiSAwWI4R" 0L, 0C

So then I came across THIS POST which had similar issues and when I type:

Jason-Guevaras-iMac:~ rimeallthetime$ sudo su -
Jason-Guevaras-iMac:~ root# crontab -u rimeallthetime -e
crontab: no crontab for rimeallthetime - using an empty one

~                                                                               
~                                                                               
~                                                                               
~                                                                               
~                                                                               
~                                                                               
~                                                                               
~                                                                               
~                                                                               
~                                                                               
~                                                                               
~                                                                               
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~                                                                               
~                                                                               
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~                                                                               
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~                                                                               
~                                                                               
"/tmp/crontab.L1nPwJdBRi" 0L, 0C

That is where I am at currently....

I have MAC OSX El Capitan version 10.11.4

Answer 1

In Terminal, open the crontab with:

sudo crontab -e 

Press i to go into insert mode.

Add the following line:

0 */23 * * * Rscript /path/to/file/JASON.r

Press Esc to leave insert mode.

Type ZZ

You should see the following message: crontab: installing new crontab .

You can verify the crontab file by using crontab -l .

Misc:

This will run the file every 23 hours.

Each star/position corresponds to:

MIN HOUR DOM MON DOW CMD

Feel free to change it to suite your needs.

Answer 2

It might be worth mentioning that cron is still supported by OSX but it has been deprecated in favor of launchd .

To create a launchd job, you need to create a "plist" file giving all needed information to run the script and place it in folder ~/Library/LaunchAgents . Here's an example plist file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>jason</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>Rscript /path/to/JASON.R</string>
        </array>
        <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
        <dict>
                <key>Minute</key>
                     <integer>0</integer>
                <key>Hour</key>
                     <integer>23</integer>
        </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

Then you need to load this plist file into the launchd scheduler and start it:

 launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/jason.plist
 launchctl start jason

In the second line the name jason corresponds to the field Label in the plist file.