[R] can R scripts detect signals sent by the task scheduler ?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Fri, 20 Nov 2009, Barry Rowlingson wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 1:25 PM,  <mauede at alice.it> wrote:
>> In general, is it possible to run R scripts through cron jobs ?
>
> Yes, the only problem might be if you use anything that needs a
> graphics window. In the old days you needed an X11 display to create
> png graphics with the png() function, but not any more. I'm not sure
> if yo need an X11 system for anything apart from showing graphs. But I
> don't know everything.

Some package authors assume such a display to install their packages 
(and a few of those may not have a choice as some graphics libraries 
seem to need one to be loaded). So my dept's automated package updater 
scripts run from cron, and start (and stop) a Xvfb X server to get 
around that.

[...]

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595