Run a script on Raspbian startup but not on terminal open

Question

I have added a command in .bashrc to run a script at startup of my Raspberry Pi, but everytime I open a new terminal the same script executes again.

Is there any way I can make this script run only on startup / power up and not each time I open a new terminal?

Answer 1

You can use a cron job.

Cron is used when you want to schedule jobs to run at specific times, e.g. every hour, every Sunday at 3 a.m. It stores the details in a table for each user called a crontab which is read during boot.

One of the "times" you can specify is at a reboot.

To list your crontab use the command

crontab -l

To edit/create your crontab use the command

crontab -e

On occasion you might want to run a script as root in which case precede the previous two commands with sudo.

Use the following commands for help

man cron
man -5 crontab

In your case you need a simple job like I use to mount a NFS disk at boot. My crontab contains the following:

@reboot              (sleep 60; /bin/mount /code)&

You need to use crontab -e and add the following to your crontab

@reboot              /home/pi/script

where /home/pi/script is the full path to the script you want to run.