Run A Program On Startup (Console On Ubuntu 18.04)
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’.
- /bin/nano <---- easiest
- /usr/bin/vim.basic
- /usr/bin/vim.tiny
- /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!