ill try if you want to something to run every hour or day or week or month, just write a little script and put it in /etc/cron.daily or /etc/cron.hourly, etc. the script can be anything, say if you want to set your system time via ntp every day, just do this echo "ntpdate -b -s some.ntp.server" > /etc/cron.daily/settime.cron chmod 700 /etc/cron.daily/settime.cron now, if you want to do things every minute or every 12 minutes or every 3rd monday or something like that, you will use the crontab file /etc/crontab the syntax for crontab entries are like * * * * * /path/to/script/to/run where the *'s represent minute of hour hour of day day of month month day of week or i think thats how it goes so if you want to run a script every 10 minutes, you could do something like * */10 * * * root /home/dog/myscript.sh On Mon, 27 Aug 2001, Ray Booysen wrote:

Is there anyone who can help me understand how to use cron to do events at certain times.

Thanks Ray Booysen

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Chad Whitten Network/Systems Administrator Nexband Communications chadwick@nexband.com

On Monday 27 August 2001 09:45 am, Ray Booysen wrote:

Is there anyone who can help me understand how to use cron to do events at certain times.

Thanks Ray Booysen

Here's a simple example: 1) Issue: crontab -e (as user or root as appropriate) 2) Edit the file shown (which might be empty to start) Here are a few examples from mine: PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/opt/bin:/opt/teTeX/bin:/opt/kde/bin: LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib:/usr/local/orexx/lib:/opt/kde/lib:/usr/local/bin: MAILTO="" # min hr day month dayofweek #0-59 0-23 0-31 0-12 0-7 (0 is Sun) #Run Tripwire at 15 after noon every day 15 12 * * * /usr/local/Tripwire_221/bin/runtw #update the clock every day at Noon (let NTP try for awhile) 0 12 * * * rdate -s time-b.nist.gov 1 12 * * * hwclock --systohc # min hr day month dayofweek #run klogd once an hour 1 0-23 * * * klogd -o #Ping the world every 5 minutes 1-59/5 0-23 * * * ping somewhere.edu #Run LOGCHECK every hour 1 0-23 * * * /usr/local/bin/logcheck.sh #Run the weather data get every 10 mins */10 * * * * /usr/local/bin/getwx #check if daemons have quit every 15 mins */15 * * * * /usr/local/bin/keepup # min hr day month dayofweek #Create web history at 1am each day 0 1 * * * /home/welsh/logs/webanal 0 1 * * * /home/logs/webanal # Do a time update once a day 00:29 29 0 * * * /usr/sbin/ntpdate cunixd.cc.columbia.edu NOTE: Most of these are bogus or commented out!!!. But use the comments and the time/day values as examples.... -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + Bruce S. Marshall bmarsh@bmarsh.com Bellaire, MI 08/27/01 11:30 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous."

On Monday 27 August 2001 05:21 pm, Ray Booysen wrote:

is the path needed. I need to send a signal. I want to run "killall -TERM proxyper" as the command. Will this work as it is?

Dunno... You'd have to try it. I suspect the path is needed. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + Bruce S. Marshall bmarsh@bmarsh.com Bellaire, MI 08/27/01 17:55 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "In a fight between you and the world, back the world."

On 27-Aug-01 Bruce Marshall wrote:

On Monday 27 August 2001 05:21 pm, Ray Booysen wrote:

...

is the path needed. I need to send a signal. I want to run "killall -TERM proxyper" as the command. Will this work as it is?

Dunno... You'd have to try it. I suspect the path is needed.

I'd reccomend always putting in the full path; that way you're safe. Cron sets up some environment variables for the commands it runs according to the user who owns the crontab file. For instance, it picks up $HOME from the user's entry in /etc/passwd (see man 5 crontab). So you could certainly have a crontab line like * * * * * $HOME/bin/myprog But $PATH is very much a "dynamic" variable for a user, and there's no reliable way cron could look for a user's particular current $PATH. If you want to make sure that cron uses a particular $PATH you can set this in the crontab file, with a line like PATH="/the/path:/you/want:/to/use" (nothing else: this sort of crontab line is not time-linked and so is global) in which case you can omit full paths from the cron commands provided they're covered by the crotab $PATH. Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 167 1972 Date: 28-Aug-01 Time: 10:48:41 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------