Gcalcron is a project mainly written in ..., it's free.
Cron graphical interface using Google Calendar
GCALCRON v0.1 - DOCUMENTATIONCopyright Patrick Spear 2008 [email protected] www.pfspear.net
Please see the "Legal" section below for additional licensing information.
-- Overview --
This script allows you to control and schedule jobs on your system via Google Calendar.
For more, see these webpages: http://www.pfspear,net/projects/gcalcron http://www.pfspear.net/posts/2008/10/a-proof-of-concept
-- Usage --
gcalcron.py [-h] -u
-h help
-u
The script is ideally used as a cron job.
-- Setting up a Calendar --
First, you need to create a calendar for gcalcron to check in on. When logged in to your Google Calendar, choose settings from the top right corner and select the "Calendars" tab. Under "My Calendars", find and click "Create New Calendar". Set it up as you would any other- but be sure not to share it. You can call it what you like- name is not important.
Once created, you'll be back at the "Calendars" tab. Find and click on your newly created calendar, which will take you to a screen showing the calendar's details. At the bottom, you'll see a section called "Calendar Address", and within that section, there will be an email address with a long string of letters and numbers at the domain group.calendars.google.com. Copy and paste that entire address to somewhere- we'll need it later.
With that, your calendar should be all set up.
-- Installing on your System --
If you're on a Debian-based distro (Ubuntu users, that's you), an included script should set up everything need automatically. Please note this is a dumb script made just to save you typing in commands, and it probably won't work on anything not Debian-based. If something fails or you want something other than the default settings, read below for manual installation instructions. They're pretty simple.
To install, run this as root. You'll need the calendar id from the step above. ./setup.sh install
-- Manual Installation --
Use root powers where necessary.
First, make sure that python in installed on your system. I imagine most distros come with it installed, but double check, because without it, nothing will work.
Next, we need to install Google Python API. The following commands will get, unzip and install that. wget http://gdata-python-client.googlecode.com/files/gdata.py-1.2.1.tar.gz tar -xvf gdata.py-1.2.1.tar.gz cd gdata.py-1.2.1 python setup.py install cd .. rm -rf gdata.py-1.2.1 gdata.py-1.2.1.tar.gz
Install the script simply by copying it to your usr/bin. cp gcalcron.py /usr/bin
Finally, we make a cron entry to run the script. In /etc/cron.d, create a file called "gcalcron". Open that file and add these two lines, filling in necessary information where it's needed:
/30 * root gcalcron.py -u [username] -p [password] -c [calendar id]
If /etc/cron.d doesn't exist, look up how to add cron jobs on your system.
If you'd like to change to change how gcalcron will be run, just change the options listed in your cron job setup. As it is set up here, it will run quietly every half an hour with no prefix added to the commands.
Important! Please be aware that your Google account password will be stored in plaintext in the gcalcron cron.d entry. If you aren't the computer administrator, you may not want to install the script.
-- Uninstalling --
No uninstall script is provided. If you want to reverse the installation, just remove the script from /usr/bin and delete the cron job file- you'll be right back where you started. To uninstall the Google's API, see their docs.
-- Using it --
Now you're all set up. To use the thing, all you have to do is create
events in your automation calendar. When an event is created, choose to edit
the event and enter any commands you'd like to execute into the description.
When gcalcron checks in and sees an event for the current time, those commands
will be executed.
You can list commands to be executed when the event ends by adding a line containing "---". Anything after that delimiter will be executed when gcalcron checks and sees the event ending at the current time. For example, if you could get your computer to control your air conditioner, you can have one event called "Air conditioning" that will turn the AC both on and off. It might look something like this:
accontrol --off
How else could the script be used, if you take the time to hook things up to your system?
And any of those things can be changed/administrated using Google Calendar from anywhere you can get a net connection.
-- Testing --
To make sure that your system is set up properly before using it, follow this procedure to test.
If a file appears in your home directory called "gcalcrontest" and contains the word "Success", you'll know that you are successfully connecting to Google Calendar and can retrieve information. You're all set.
-- Legal --
This script is distributed under the GPL v3.0. It may be freely copied, modified and distributed so long as any derivative works are also licenced under the GPU v3.0, as per this little blurb here:
"This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/."
And just to reiterate: this script is made available as-is, with no guarantee. As author I take no responsibility for anything that may come about because of its use.
If you do decide to improve or extend this script, I'd appreciate a mention for the concept, and if you could provide links back to the orginal project pages at www.pfspear.net/projects/gcalcron and www,pfspear.net/posts/10/a- proof-of-concept, I would appreciate it.