Cron jobs setup

[dan at langille.org (Dan Langille)]

On 28 Dec 2004 at 9:08, Andy Harrison wrote:

> On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 22:12:09 -0800, Joseph E. Maxwell
> <jemaxwell_(_at_)_jaymax_(_dot_)_com> wrote:
> > I am setting up a cron job to run a shell script at 1 hr interval and to
> > have the output of the script sent to a user. I have this in the cron
> > file inserted by crontab
> > 
> >     cat /var/cron/tabs/whoser
> > 
> >         # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE - edit the master and reinstall.
> >         # (cron_reg installed on Fri Dec 24 18:13:01 2004)
> >         # (Cron version -- $FreeBSD:
> >         src/usr.sbin/cron/crontab/crontab.c,v 1.12.2.4 2001/06/16
> >         03:18:37 peter Exp $)
> >         0       1       *       *       *
> >         /blah/blah/blah/blah/blah/blah/blah/blah/blah/blah/pam2deb.shl
> >         MAILTO=user
> 
> 
> Reread the crontab manpage.  0 1 * * * doesn't mean once per hour, it
> means that it will run every day at 1AM.  If you want once per hour, I
> believe you can do */60 * * * *

For more info, see man 5 crontab:

"Steps are also permitted after an asterisk, so if you want to say 
``every two hours'', just use ``*/2''."  

This is also once per hour:

0 * * * * ... etc

That runs at the top of the hour.  Some people prefer to distribute 
the load by running at some other time, e.g. at 8 * * * * (eight 
minutes after the hour).

-- 
Dan Langille : http://www.langille.org/
BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference - http://www.bsdcan.org/