ATRUN(8) System Manager's Manual ATRUN(8)

atrun — run jobs queued for later execution

atrun [-l load_avg] [-d]

The atrun utility runs commands queued by at(1). It is invoked periodically by launchd(8) as specified in the com.apple.atrun.plist property list. By default the property list contains the key set to true, so atrun is never invoked.

Execute the following command as root to enable atrun:

launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.atrun.plist

At every invocation, atrun starts all the jobs in the lowercase queues whose start time has elapsed. In addition, if the load average over the last minute was less than the specified limit, then a maximum of one batch job (denoted by the uppercase queues) is started.

Before starting a job, atrun checks the status of its owner's account with pam(3) and refuses to run the job if the account is unavailable, e.g., locked out or expired.

load_avg
Specify a limiting load factor, over which batch jobs should not be run, instead of the default of 1.5 * number of active CPUs.
Debug; print error messages to standard error instead of using syslog(3).

/etc/pam.d/atrun
pam.conf(5) configuration file for atrun
/usr/lib/cron/jobs
Directory containing job files
/usr/lib/cron/spool
Directory containing output spool files

at(1), pam(3), syslog(3), pam.conf(5), launchd(8)

Thomas Koenig ⟨ig25@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de⟩

June 22, 2015 macOS 15.6