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51 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
51 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 122
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Title: HPR0122: Batch processing on Linux
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0122/hpr0122.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:45:05
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---
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Hey it's Steve Geek and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio. On
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today's short episode I want to tell you about batch processing on Linux
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using the at and batch commands. Now before we get into this to make sure you
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have them if you run Debian Linux you already have them installed. If you run
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another flavor of Linux you may want to check and make sure you have the
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package at Alfred Pango at installed. Now that's processing. You might be
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asking yourself deep deep why do we want to do this? Didn't this go out in the
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70s? Well yes and no it's certainly less prevalent as machines have gotten
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faster but you often have lots of jobs that could benefit from being run
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automatically. Such as converting videos from one format to another converting
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waves to MP3s something like that. For the example I'll use I'll be
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converting an MP3 to an odd with higher compression for the sake of a digital
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music player. So how would this work? Well if you want to run jobs in succession
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as compute as CPU processor time permits we use the batch command and it's very
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easy to do. You kick off the next term you pipe in batch and hit enter and it'll
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come up with a little mini shell where you can type in commands. So you get your
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mini shell where you can pipe in a line and you type in like in my case for my
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example I type an MP3 to odd space dash dash quality equal zero dash been rev
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whatever that MP3 at hit enter you get the mini shell line again you control
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D to get out of that and you can do that as many times as you want in succession
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each time you do that it's going to say something like job so-and-so. Now it'll
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begin running jobs in the background and as it runs the jobs it'll wait until
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this 3 CPU time to pick off the next job and as it finishes each job it's
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going to email you the results of your job. So in this case you'll see files
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popping up in your directory with the new format and providing that you have
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your internal email sub correct with it is to say that you're set up to read
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emails sent from within your system as well as from the internet you'll see you
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know one mail message waiting two mail messages waiting you know and then you
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can go for your mail time read them and in the background very efficiently
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you'll step through any number of files and convert them and it's a great
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thing to do that's the operation of the command batch now the other
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command which does almost the same thing is at and what add is for is taking
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off a job at a specific time so you can instead of typing batch can type in
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at space 1pm or at space 1300 or at midnight or at now plus one hour and then
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the mini shell will come up again you'll type in your batch commands and at the
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appointed time that will kick off and run the job and in this way you know you
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can have a little computerized computer operator working free within your
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computer I hope you've enjoyed today's episode of Hacker Public Radio
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Hacker Public Radio is community radius so please consider recording your own
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episodes have a lovely day
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thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio
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HPR is sponsored by Carol.net so head on over to C-A-R-O dot
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