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Run A Program On Startup (Console On Ubuntu 18.04)

crontab

By Nicholas BrownFollow me on Twitter.

As an alternative to using the GUI startup configuration tool or rc.local, you can use the crontab -e command to add a program to the cron job scheduler, so that it will launch it at startup, even if there is no GUI installed (useful for Ubuntu servers).

First, type:

crontab -e

Afterwards, it may ask you the following. Select the number that corresponds to your preferred text editor:

no crontab for username - using an empty one

Select an editor.  To change later, run 'select-editor'.
  1. /bin/nano        <---- easiest
  2. /usr/bin/vim.basic
  3. /usr/bin/vim.tiny
  4. /bin/ed

Choose 1-4 [1]: 1

I selected Nano, as that is my preferred text editor. You may see something like:

# Edit this file to introduce tasks to be run by cron.
#
# Each task to run has to be defined through a single line
# indicating with different fields when the task will be run
# and what command to run for the task
#
# To define the time you can provide concrete values for
# minute (m), hour (h), day of month (dom), month (mon),
# and day of week (dow) or use '*' in these fields (for 'any').#
# Notice that tasks will be started based on the cron's system
# daemon's notion of time and timezones.
#
# Output of the crontab jobs (including errors) is sent through
# email to the user the crontab file belongs to (unless redirected).
#
# For example, you can run a backup of all your user accounts
# at 5 a.m every week with:
# 0 5 * * 1 tar -zcf /var/backups/home.tgz /home/
#
# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cron(8)
#
# m h dom mon dow command

Next, scroll to the bottom of the file and add the following line. All you really have to remember here is  ‘@reboot’.

@reboot /path/executable

Press Ctrl + O to save if using Nano, and then Ctrl + X to exit. That’s it!

Next: How To Stop Programs From Running On Startup In Ubuntu

Learn about other Ubuntu commands

What To Do If Ubuntu Can’t Write To Your Windows Partition

Recovering Ubuntu After A Windows Update

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