AT(1)

🌸 AT(1) — the "run it later bestie" manual 🌸

okay so this is the page for at, batch, atq, and atrm from the General Commands Manual section. it's giving time-delayed main character energy and honestly? obsessed. 💅

---

✨ NAME ✨

at, batch, atq, atrm — queue, examine, or delete jobs for later execution 🕐💖

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

at [-V] [-q queue] [-f file] [-u username] [-mMlv] timespec ...
at [-V] [-q queue] [-f file] [-u username] [-mMkv] [-t time]
at -c job [...]
at [-V] -l [-o timeformat] [job ...]
atq [-V] [-q queue] [-o timeformat] [job ...]
at [-rd] job [...]
atrm [-V] job [...]
batch
at -b

no cap, that's a lot of little flag combos. but we love her for it 🫶

---

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so here's the vibe: at and batch read commands from standard input (or from a file you point them at) and then run those commands at a later time, using /bin/sh. it's basically "hey future me, do this" 🦋

• at — executes commands at a specified time. ⏰
• atq — lists the user's pending jobs, unless the user is the superuser; in that case, everybody's jobs are listed. the format of the output lines (one for each job) is: Job number, date, hour, queue, and username.
• atrm — deletes jobs, identified by their job number. bye bestie 👋
• batch — executes commands when system load levels permit; in other words, when the load average drops below 1.5, or the value specified in the invocation of atd.

---

At allows fairly complex time specifications, extending the POSIX.2 standard. it accepts times of the form HH:MM to run a job at a specific time of day. (if that time is already past, the next day is assumed — awkward but true 🙈)

you may also specify midnight, noon, or teatime (4pm) and you can have a time-of-day suffixed with AM or PM for running in the morning or the evening.

you can also say what day the job will be run, by giving a date in the form month-name day with an optional year, or giving a date of the form MMDD[CC]YY, MM/DD/[CC]YY, DD.MM.[CC]YY or [CC]YY-MM-DD. the specification of a date must follow the specification of the time of day — order matters, queen 👑

you can also give times like now + count time-units, where the time-units can be minutes, hours, days, or weeks, and you can tell at to run the job today by suffixing the time with today and to run the job tomorrow by suffixing the time with tomorrow. ⭐

for example, to run a job at 4pm three days from now, you would do at 4pm + 3 days, to run a job at 10:00am on July 31, you would do at 10am Jul 31 and to run a job at 1am tomorrow, you would do at 1am tomorrow. 🎀

if you specify a job to absolutely run at a specific time and date in the past, the job will run as soon as possible. for example, if it is 8pm and you do a at 6pm today, it will run more likely at 8:05pm. time travel? not in this house 💀

the definition of the time specification can be found in /usr/share/doc/at/timespec. 📄

---

for both at and batch, commands are read from standard input or the file specified with the -f option and executed. the working directory, the environment (except for the variables BASH_VERSINFO, DISPLAY, EUID, GROUPS, SHELLOPTS, TERM, UID, and _) and the umask are retained from the time of invocation.

as at is currently implemented as a setuid program, other environment variables (e.g., LD_LIBRARY_PATH or LD_PRELOAD) are also not exported. this may change in the future. as a workaround, set these variables explicitly in your job. 🫶

an at - or batch - command invoked from a su(1) shell will retain the current userid. the user will be mailed standard error and standard output from his commands, if any. mail will be sent using the command /usr/sbin/sendmail. if at is executed from a su(1) shell, the owner of the login shell will receive the mail. 📬

the superuser may use these commands in any case. for other users, permission to use at is determined by the files /etc/at.allow and /etc/at.deny. see at.allow(5) for details. 🔐

---

✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -V — prints the version number to standard error and exit successfully. "who am i?" energy 💅
• -q queue — uses the specified queue. a queue designation consists of a single letter; valid queue designations range from a to z and A to Z. the a queue is the default for at and the b queue for batch. queues with higher letters run with increased niceness. the special queue "=" is reserved for jobs which are currently running. 🏃‍♀️

if a job is submitted to a queue designated with an uppercase letter, the job is treated as if it were submitted to batch at the time of the job. once the time is reached, the batch processing rules with respect to load average apply. if atq is given a specific queue, it will only show jobs pending in that queue. 👑

• -m — Send mail to the user when the job has completed even if there was no output. 📧
• -M — Never send mail to the user. silence is golden, periodt 🤫
• -u username — Sends mail to username rather than the current user.
• -f file — Reads the job from file rather than standard input.
• -t time — run the job at time, given in the format [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss]
• -l — Is an alias for atq.
• -r — Is an alias for atrm.
• -d — Is an alias for atrm.
• -b — is an alias for batch.
• -v — Shows the time the job will be executed before reading the job. 👀

Times displayed will be in the format "Thu Feb 20 14:50:00 1997".

• -c — cats the jobs listed on the command line to standard output. 🐱 (not literally cats, it's cat, but you knew that)
• -o fmt — strftime-like time format used for the job list ✨

---

✨ FILES ✨

• /var/spool/cron/atjobs
• /var/spool/cron/atspool
• /proc/loadavg
• /var/run/utmp
• /etc/at.allow
• /etc/at.deny

---

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

at.allow(5), at.deny(5), atd(8), cron(1), nice(1), sh(1), umask(2). 💜

---

✨ BUGS ✨

the correct operation of batch for Linux depends on the presence of a proc-type directory mounted on /proc. ⚠️

if the file /var/run/utmp is not available or corrupted, or if the user is not logged on at the time at is invoked, the mail is sent to the userid found in the environment variable LOGNAME. if that is undefined or empty, the current userid is assumed. 😭

At and batch as presently implemented are not suitable when users are competing for resources. if this is the case for your site, you might want to consider another batch system, such as nqs. 💀

---

✨ AUTHOR ✨

At was mostly written by Thomas Koenig. 👑

---

so yeah, that's the whole page!! this version is dated 2009-11-14 and it lives under the AT(1) name in the General Commands Manual section. thanks for reading bestie, go schedule something iconic ✨🎀🦋💖