adding magnet links from cron job

Question

I have a piece of python script which puts magnet links in transmission. Now when I run it through terminal it runs ok, opens transmission if closed and adds the torrent/s. Now when I put it in a cron, transmission doesn't open but I know that the cron is running because it writes to a text file the name of the file which is being added.

def download_movie(magnet_link):
    os.system('transmission-gtk ' + magnet_link)

As you can see the code is pretty simple and just invokes transmission and passes the magnet link. Thank you.

frankenapps · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-17T10:57:14.660

1

Altough resons for this may vary, what solved the issue for me most times was logging in as superuser and then do the cron. If that does not work additional information would be needed, so consider also posting the log. It should be in /var/log/syslog.

What might help, too is setting an absolute path for python: Instead of python write the full path, normally /usr/bin/python+yourVersionNumber

edited May 17 '16 at 10:57

answered May 17 '16 at 10:52

frankenapps

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I'll test this out and get back to you. Thank you – Ocirne May 17 '16 at 11:38
Well then you should accept my answer, so that other people who have the same problem might easily find the solution – frankenapps May 18 '16 at 08:49
to add to your answer i used postfix and viewed the messages and saw that transmission gui could not open. – Ocirne May 18 '16 at 22:40

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 17 '16 at 10:58

If the script is really simple you could write the code in bash, it would be something like this...

magnetlink=`cat file.txt | cut -d ' ' -f1`
echo "magnetlink" | transmission-gtk

Like @frankenapps said you could try adding the code to:

sudo crontab -e

adding magnet links from cron job

2 Answers2