rxguil has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi all, I did a search on cron but I did not find what I was looking for. Maybe what I am looking for does not exist, in which at least I will know to cancel my search.

My host does not give me access to use cron unless I upgrade to a virtual server (considerable price hike). Is there any way around this?

I have just a simple website with a private calendar, and I would like this calendar to email me a day before each event as a friendly reminder. So this is not worth getting a dedicated server for.

Any ideas would be helpful Thanks, Ron ronaldpguilmet@comcast.net

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: ALTERNATIVE TO CRON.SH
by Trimbach (Curate) on Feb 19, 2004 at 16:39 UTC
    If you leave your computer at home on all the time you can use your local machine's cron (or 'at' for Windows) to trigger a remote event on the server (via CGI) that sends you your email reminder as necessary. Of course, if you're going to do that you might consider doing everything on your local machine and cutting out the server entirely, but that might not be feasible if (for example) your server handles all your remote access to the calendar.

    Gary Blackburn
    Trained Killer

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Re: ALTERNATIVE TO CRON.SH
by castaway (Parson) on Feb 20, 2004 at 07:56 UTC
    Why hasn't anyone mentioned Schedule::Cron here? Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

    C.

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Re: ALTERNATIVE TO CRON.SH
by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Feb 19, 2004 at 15:42 UTC
    My host does not give me access to use cron unless I upgrade to a virtual server (considerable price hike). Is there any way around this?
    Not really. Of course, you could always set up something that is going to mail you every day, but that will be less reliable or draw more resources that a cron solution. Or likely to be both. It certainly will piss off your host.

    You could use pull instead of push technology though. Just make a CGI program that emails you when you request it.

    But it looks like you are searching for a technical solution to a non-technical problem. Your technical problem (how do I email on a daily basis) has been solved decades ago, and is called cron. Your problem is "I don't want to pay for the service". Which isn't a technical one.

    There's no such thing as a free lunch. And none of this has anything at all to do with Perl.

    Abigail

[reply]
      There's no such thing as a free lunch. And none of this has anything at all to do with Perl. Abigail

      If this has nothing to do with perl, then why did you throw your comments out there?

      Was it to show how "charming" you are?

      First of all, I am not looking for a "Free lunch". That's original. I have a personal site for a hobbie, NOT a commercial site. Therefore, it makes no sense to pay $50/month for cron. I can live with out it. I was curious if there were alternatives. Seeing that there isn't, that is fine also.

      You really should go to charm school. Until then please try and refrain from repling to these nodes, for you paint an ugly picture PERL programmers, and you might discourage new commers.

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Re: ALTERNATIVE TO CRON.SH
by imcsk8 (Pilgrim) on Feb 19, 2004 at 16:35 UTC
    there's the at command, you culd check if you have it available.
    ignorance, the plague is everywhere --guttermouth
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Re: ALTERNATIVE TO CRON.SH
by BUU (Prior) on Feb 20, 2004 at 09:53 UTC
    Why don't you just run the calendar+cron on whatever box you call yours? Then you don't have to worry about your host. If you want to integrate with the website, run a cron-like job on your computer that access the website and parses html or something.
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Re: ALTERNATIVE TO CRON.SH
by Plankton (Vicar) on Feb 20, 2004 at 16:09 UTC
    If I where you I'd find another host. For example HE offers crontab with the basic web hosting.

    Plankton: 1% Evil, 99% Hot Gas.
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