How to Schedule Bot Actions

[Note:] A more modern approach to scheduled LifeBots activities is available as a LifeBots Add-On with the Routine Planner Add-On at https://lifebots.cloud/store/addon/routine-planner. With Routine Planner you can build fully automated, interactive bot behaviors using routines that run on schedules, react to chat/IM triggers, execute actions step-by-step, and even branch routines based on user responses.

The Truth & Beauty Lab utilizes the Cron subsystem on Linux and Macos to schedule bot actions. Truth & Beauty Lab bots are logged in, teleported to various locations, seated on various objects, and engaged in a variety of activities using crontab entries that execute Corrade and LifeBots API requests at scheduled times.

Prepare a crontab.in input file for Crontab

The crontab command can accept an input file formatted with the proper syntax. Prepare a crontab.in file with your scheduled bot activities as botctrl commands or scripts you have written that use the BotControl facility. Once you have your crontab.in file prepared, issue the command crontab crontab.in.

Crontab Syntax

Each job entry in the crontab file follows a specific format on a single line:

minute    hour    day_of_month    month    day_of_week    command_to_execute

Each of the first five fields accepts specific values, ranges, lists, or step values:

Field	Description	Allowed Values
Minute	Minute of the hour	0 to 59
Hour	Hour of the day (24-hour format)	0 to 23
Day of Month	Day of the month	1 to 31
Month	Month of the year	1 to 12 (or names like JAN, FEB)
Day of Week	Day of the week	0 to 6 (0 or 7 is Sunday, or names like SUN, MON)

Special Characters

• * (Asterisk): Matches all possible values for that field (e.g., * in the hour field means every hour).
• , (Comma): Specifies a list of values (e.g., 1,15,30 in the minute field means at minutes 1, 15, and 30).
• - (Hyphen): Specifies a range of values (e.g., 1-5 in the day of week field means Monday through Friday).
• / (Slash): Specifies a step value (e.g., */15 in the minute field means every 15 minutes).

Predefined Macros

You can use shortcuts like @hourly, @daily, @weekly, @monthly, @yearly, or @reboot in place of the five time-date fields.

Example crontab.in

Here is an example crontab entry with some brief descriptions in comments of what activities are scheduled:

SHELL=/bin/bash
#
# Schedule BotControl actions
# -------------------------
# Uses the botctrl command line tool at:
#   https://github.com/slbotcontrol/BotControl/blob/main/botctrl
# Assumes some configuration in ~/.botctrl has been performed
#
# m h  dom mon dow   command
#
# Weekdays send Anya bot to the club at midnight
0 0 * * 1-5 /bin/bash -lc /usr/local/BotControl/anya2club >> /usr/local/BotControl/log/cron.log 2>&1
# Weekends send Anya bot to the beach at 11am
0 11 * * 0,6 /bin/bash -lc /usr/local/BotControl/anya2beach >> /usr/local/BotControl/log/cron.log 2>&1
# Monday at 4pm send Anya bot to DJ at the Media Sphere
0 16 * * 1 /bin/bash -lc /usr/local/BotControl/anya2msdj >> /usr/local/BotControl/log/cron.log 2>&1
# Monday at 6pm sit Anya in theater seating after her set
0 18 * * 1 /bin/bash -lc /usr/local/BotControl/anya2seat >> /usr/local/BotControl/log/cron.log 2>&1
# Tuesday at 6pm send Angelus bot to DJ at the club
0 18 * * 2 /bin/bash -lc /usr/local/BotControl/angelus2clubdj >> /usr/local/BotControl/log/cron.log 2>&1
# Tuesday at 8pm send Angelus bot back to his dance pole
0 20 * * 2 /bin/bash -lc /usr/local/BotControl/angelus2pole >> /usr/local/BotControl/log/cron.log 2>&1
# Friday at 6pm send Easy bot to DJ at the club
0 18 * * 5 /bin/bash -lc /usr/local/BotControl/easy2clubdj >> /usr/local/BotControl/log/cron.log 2>&1
# Friday at 8pm send Easy bot back to her dance pole
0 20 * * 5 /bin/bash -lc /usr/local/BotControl/easy2pole >> /usr/local/BotControl/log/cron.log 2>&1
# Saturday at 6pm send all bots to dance at the club
0 18 * * 6 /bin/bash -lc /usr/local/BotControl/bots2clubdance >> /usr/local/BotControl/log/cron.log 2>&1
# Saturday at 9pm send all bots back to their default locations
0 21 * * 6 /bin/bash -lc /usr/local/BotControl/bots2home >> /usr/local/BotControl/log/cron.log 2>&1
# Check every hour if Easy bot is at the club greeting visitors
# 0 * * * * /bin/bash -lc /usr/local/BotControl/checkbot >> /usr/local/BotControl/log/cron.log 2>&1
# Send the Easy Islay bot's L$ balance to myself on the 1st of every month
# 0 0 1 * * /bin/bash -lc /usr/local/BotControl/send_easy_balance >> /usr/local/BotControl/log/easy.log 2>&1

Using a crontab.in file similar to this example but containing your own customized bot commands, issue the command crontab crontab.in.

To view your currently active crontab entries run the command crontab -l.

• crontab -e: Edits the crontab file, or creates one if it doesn’t exist.
• crontab -l: Displays the current crontab entries.
• crontab -r: Removes the current crontab file entirely (use with caution).

Advanced Crontab Example

Crontab entries can be fairly complex. In this example the crontab entries are crafted to run a cryptocurrency miner only during an energy provider’s Off-Peak hours.

The schedule set here is for the PG&E Time-of-Use Rate Plan E-6.

Although unrelated to scheduled bot actions, this example illustrates some of the ways crontab can be used to schedule activity.

# By default these entries run every 15 minutes. This provides
# a keepalive function and relies on the start_miner script checking
# to see if it is already running. You may prefer to change the
# '0,15,30,45' entries to simply '0' or '15' to only start/stop once
# and not every 15 minutes. Or, you may prefer to increase the "keepalive"
# frequency from 15 to 5 minutes - '0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55'
#
# Set SHELL to run my custom cron startup script when running commands
SHELL=/usr/local/bin/cron.bash
#
# minutes hours days-of-month months days-of-week  command
#
# Start miner during off-peak hours (Summer)
# ------------------------------------------
# Weekdays
0,15,30,45 0-9,21-23 * 5-10 1-5 /usr/local/bin/start_miner
# Weekends
0,15,30,45 0-12,20-23 * 5-10 0,6 /usr/local/bin/start_miner
#
# Start miner during off-peak hours (Winter)
# ------------------------------------------
# Weekdays
0,15,30,45 0-16,20-23 * 1-4,11,12 1-5 /usr/local/bin/start_miner
# Weekends
0,15,30,45 * * 1-4,11,12 0,6 /usr/local/bin/start_miner
#
# Stop miner during peak/near-peak hours (Summer)
# -----------------------------------------------
# Weekdays
0,15,30,45 10-20 * 5-10 1-5 /usr/local/bin/stop_miner
# Weekends
0,15,30,45 13-19 * 5-10 0,6 /usr/local/bin/stop_miner
#
# Stop miner during peak/near-peak hours (Winter)
# -----------------------------------------------
0,15,30,45 17-19 * 1-4,11,12 1-5 /usr/local/bin/stop_miner