[OS X 10.4] Crontab restart doesn't work

[carlsson]

I want my old server to restart itself every night. So I edited the Crontab, added this:

40 3 * * * shutdown -r now

Still, it won't restart.

What am I doing wrong? Is there a simpler way to make the Mac restart every night?

 

[carlsson]

Hmmm, I changed the command to
/sbin/shutdown -r now

...and now it works. It was not shut down gracefully though. :-|

 

[ScoobyMcDoo]

Instead of the shutdown command, try this:

osascript -e 'tell app "System Events" to restart'

It works from the command line, but haven't tried it from a cron job.

 

[carlsson]

Thanks Scooby.

However, the shutdown -r function works now with crontab and it all seems okey. I just want to confirm that the reboot is a graceful one. Do you know?

 

[ScoobyMcDoo]

Thanks Scooby.

However, the shutdown -r function works now with crontab and it all seems okey. I just want to confirm that the reboot is a graceful one. Do you know?

It is clean as far as the OS is considered. However I think the method I told you about will more safely shutdown a logged in session. For example, the shutdown -r will reboot even if you have a document opened an not saved.