Is there a way to schedule a shutdown on an interval from the command line?

Question

I need to shut down a Mac every night at 10:00 pm. Does Mac have a scheduler that I should use, or should I defer to cron? I'm a Linux user, this was a question asked to me by a friend. I'd like to be able to insert the command from a terminal like I would in Linux:

crontab -e 

or

(crontab -l >/dev/null 2>/dev/null && (crontab -l && echo "@reboot do-stuff") | crontab -)

What's the best option for doing something from the command line? I'm not exactly too familiar with OSX.

Answer 1

cron is there for compatibility, but it has been superseded by launchd, which does indeed have the ability to schedule events. You need, in your property list file, a StartCalendarInterval key with a value that is a simple a Hour/Minute pair:

<key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
<dict>
    <key>Hour</key>
    <integer>22</integer>
    <key>Minute</key>
    <integer>00</integer>
</dict>

Answer 2

pmset is the command line utility for the system preferences energy saver schedule section.

sudo pmset repeat shutdown MTWRFSU 22:00:00

GUI at Apple menu > System Preferences... > Energy Saver > Schedule (button)