Schedule SlimerJS task on Ubuntu

Question

I'm attempting to set up a recurring task using SlimerJS on Ubuntu. It works standalone in the terminal via:

(cd /[slimerdir]; ./slimerjs views.js)

However, when I put the command into the Gnome Task Scheduler and run it, no browser window pops up. It just says to hit enter to close the window.

Anyone know what I'm missing here (or if it's even possible to run SlimerJS this way?)

Answer 1

With the help of @user------- I figured out that the following is needed on Ubuntu:

(env DISPLAY=:0; cd [slimerdir]/slimerjs; export SLIMERJSLAUNCHER=/usr/bin/firefox; [slimerdir]/views.js)

otherwise the terminal window wouldn't open.

Answer 2

Two points regarding cron:

1. As the PATH is different from your usual path and the cwd is sometimes not what you expect, use absolute paths.

2. If you call a GUI program from outside the normal X environment, you need to specify the DISPLAY variable, for example via env.

As Gnome Task Scheduler is just a front-end for cron, the DISPLAY environment variable is probably missing. Try

env DISPLAY=:0 [slimerdir]/slimerjs [slimerdir]/views.js

A crontab line that worked for testing with DISPLAY=:1.0 was

* * * * *  env DISPLAY=:1.0 /dir/slimerjs /dir/hello.js

See @Optimus answer as to what worked in the end.