How can I run anacron in user mode?

Question

I would like to set up a scheduled task via anacron but I would like to do so in user mode. How can I achieve this?

Solution

You can set up a separate anacron instance to run in user mode:

1. Create a .anacron folder in your home directory and in it two subfolders, etc and spool:

   mkdir -p ~/.anacron/{etc,spool}
   

2. Create a new file ~/.anacron/etc/anacrontab with contents similar to the following:

   # /etc/anacrontab: configuration file for anacron
   
   # See anacron(8) and anacrontab(5) for details.
   
   SHELL=/bin/bash
   PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
   
   # period  delay  job-identifier  command
   1         10     testjob         test.sh
   

3. Add the following line to your crontab using crontab -e:

   @hourly /usr/sbin/anacron -s -t $HOME/.anacron/etc/anacrontab -S $HOME/.anacron/spool
   

Comments

[Glutanimate]

Mmh, I am a GUI user myself and the line in .profile has always worked fine for me (Ubuntu 12.04 here).

[Christoph]

Just to confirm, this runs the specified script as the user, so a whoami in the script will give the user name?

[Sparhawk]

I think you need to run anacron periodically; it seems to run once then quit. The system's anacron is called once every hour. I suppose a similar strategy would work here, i.e. call the user anacron from the user crontab.

[Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com]

@Sparhawk agreed, in particular Ubuntu 15.10 anacron uses both /etc/apm/event.d/anacron and /etc/init/anacron.conf to take care of restarts.

[Razor]

This won't work if the user has an encrypted home directory. I've replaced that last crontab -e command with an entry in my ~/.profile instead.

[stucash]

@Razor but my .profile entry didn't get me anywhere: anacron didn't run at login. I had to sudo everytime to do this, requiring my password

[telometto]

@Glutanimate thank you for this! It has been driving me crazy for a long time.