Using iCalBuddy in a cron process

[edasque]

I have a quick question about iCalBuddy I couldn’t find a response for in the docs

I have icalbuddy installed in /usr/local/bin and it works flawlessly from command line:

/usr/local/bin/icalBuddy -ea -tf "%H:%M" -b "" -li 4 -n -eed -npn -nc -ps "/ | /" -eep "location,notes,attendees” eventsToday

When I first ran it, if I recall, it asked me to give it access to my calendars which I did. No problem here. This is on Mavericks by the way.

However when I run it from the cron, I see this error in the system.log:

Jul 18 09:37:34 EDASQUEMAC1 icalBuddy[47140]: SecOSStatusWith error:[-34018] The operation couldn’t be completed. (OSStatus error -34018 - Remote error : The operation couldn‚Äôt be completed. (OSStatus error -34018 - client has neither application-identifier nor keychain-access-groups entitlements))

In the error stream for iCalBuddy I see:

2014-07-18 09:14:01.632 icalBuddy[38807:d07] * Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '* +[CalCalendarStore eventPredicateWithStartDate:endDate:calendars:]: calendars is nil'
*** Call stack at first throw:
(
0 CoreFoundation 0x96274471 __raiseError + 193
1 libobjc.A.dylib 0x909b8091 objc_exception_throw + 162
2 CoreFoundation 0x9627438b +[NSException raise:format:] + 139
3 CalendarStore 0x0002b5e6 +[CalCalendarStore eventPredicateWithStartDate:endDate:calendars:] + 260
4 icalBuddy 0x00005f93 getEvents + 611
5 icalBuddy 0x0000624c getCalItems + 172
6 icalBuddy 0x00002609 main + 1257
7 icalBuddy 0x00002075 start + 53
)

It seems that iCalBuddy when ran from cron from the same user requires some permission that it doesn’t have. Any idea on how to fix this?

[ali-rantakari]

The SecOSStatusWith in the system log is probably a red herring, and not related to this issue. The crash due to missing calendars seems to be the real issue.

I suggest you try using launchd (see man launchctl) instead, with a user-specific launch agent configuration in ~/Library/LaunchAgents.

[edasque]

Why would it work when launch interactively though?

[rvnd]

I got the same error when trying to set up a cron job for this. I can confirm that launchd works.

[coljac]

Is this the same as the issue I am facing where icalBuddy will not work headless? If I ssh into my machine, invoking icalBuddy results in "error: No calendars". It works fine from a shell opened directly on the machine.

[knu]

Same for me. Invoking icalBuddy via launchd didn't work either, but I found an easy way out.

• Open Automator and create a new application that executes a shell script that calls icalBuddy
• Save it as an application (typically in ~/Applications)
• Open the application manually and grant access to Calendars and Reminders if asked
• Add a line to your crontab via crontab -e that goes open -g ~/Applications/YourApp.app
  • Alternatively, you could run it via launchd by writing up a plist file and register it with launchctl load.

[jpm]

@knu Holy crap, that's the trick to make the damn thing work on a cron process. Legend!

[bburgess19]

Commenting here to let you know this workaround works for Ventura 13.2.1! @knu you're a monster thank you so much. Also, it turns out I didn't even need to call the app I created from within the crontab—just allowing the permissions once (which in my case, Automator only asked for Documents access) made calling my original script from the crontab work. Afterwards, I could even remove those permissions within Settings > Privacy & Security and it still worked.

[HarshalRohit]

Hey @bburgess19.
Could you please elaborate a bit more?
Q1: You did not add a cronjob for that .app you created from Automator?
Q2: After creating the .app using Automator, you just added a cronjob for your script (the one you had added in the .app)?

I assumed above two points, and tried something similar but did not work for me.

My end goal is to periodically save the output of icalBuddy in a file, which will later be used in other workflow using python.
Any suggestions around this?

[bburgess19]

@HarshalRohit
Q1: No I never added the .app to the crontab, just the script which uses icalbuddy.
Q2: Related to Q1^

I basically only followed the instructions until manually opening the .app, at which point it asked for permissions to my Documents folder. Once I granted them, my script ran as expected through cron. Hope this helps, and sorry for the tricky troubleshooting!