crontab: How to run GUI programs with cron

[rob2468]

export DISPLAY=:0.0 && /usr/bin/gnome-terminal

There is something different between GUI app started from cron and normal ways. In terminal, env variables for example are not the same. Settings set in .bashrc do not work.
What's different between cron and normal ways. I'm curious about it.

[henriquemaia]

export DISPLAY=:0.0 && /usr/bin/gnome-terminal

There is something different between GUI app started from cron and normal ways. In terminal, env variables for example are not the same. Settings set in .bashrc do not work.
What's different between cron and normal ways. I'm curious about it.

If unspecified, they're started as root (or as the cron user). You have to specify the user for it. This will set the proper environment variables.

Example:
11 * * * * your_user_here /path/to/command
<timing> <user> <command>

[noisygecko]

One thing that a lot of people probably don't realize is that you can set environment variables for a specific command by just putting them in front of the line. So, for the example of setting the DISPLAY variable in this thread, you can do this in cron:

0 11 * * *  DISPLAY=:0 /usr/bin/gnome-terminal

Just make sure you only put spaces in between the variable setting and the command. It is actually more useful in other cases where you only want to change an environment variable for a specific command.