Setting up a scheduled task using a bash script

[Norphy]

Is there a simple way of setting up a scheduled task on a Mac via the command line or a Bash script?

 

Reason I ask is, since we've moved to Mavericks our Macs have a very annoying habit of buggering up their disk permissions. Only admin users have permission to access the /Applications folder. This means that all standard users see is a long line of question marks along the dock and they can't run any other apps either.

 

Going into the disk utility and running Repair Permissions fixes this as does opening a terminal session and running "diskutil repairPermissions /" from a terminal session.

 

So what I'd like to is to set up a scheduled task via a bash script to run "diskutil repairPermissions /" every Monday morning at 9.00 and to run the task if it gets missed because the machine is off. I don't care if it uses cron or launchd just so long as it works! I've tried looking online but I find the documentation for both to be inscrutable.

 

Cheers,

 

Norphy

[unixman_again]

I think you need anacron for this. However, if you have Leopard and beyond "Leopard launchd will run skipped jobs when the machine is next awake." YMMV as I have not tested it actually does.

[furby]

Just as I was doing this today, the manual alternative is to use (Apple) Remote Desktop.

 

Select all machines.

Manage->Send Unix Command.

diskutil repairPermissions /

(or use the template)->Send

Once it's in your history you can just click retry.

 

It tells you if it succeeds or not