topic crontab in Operating System - HP-UX

crontab

srinivasa rao vaddadi — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 19:39:49 GMT

my entries in the crontab were like this

5 0 */2 * * /www/app/apache rotate .
is it every 2 week at 00:05 min in a month?

plz confirm me regarding this.

Re: crontab

Adisuria Wangsadinata_1 — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 20:03:09 GMT

Hi,

Here is the formula :

# minute hour day_of_month month weekday command
# These fields accept the following values:
# minute 0 through 59
# hour 0 through 23
# day_of_month 1 through 31
# month 1 through 12
# weekday 0 through 6 for Sunday through Saturday

For more details, check the man page :

# man crontab

If you want to be every 2 week :

05 00 * 1,15 * /www/app/apache.rotate

So the command will executed on day 1 and day 15 (consider every 2 weeks).

Hope this information can help.

Cheers,
AW

Re: crontab

srinivasa rao vaddadi — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 20:09:00 GMT

could u please explain wat is this */2 in the third field indicates

Re: crontab

Patrick Wallek — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 20:20:11 GMT

Are you on HP-UX? Or are you running Linux?

If you are running HP-UX the "*/2" means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! That is an invalid syntax for HP-UX crontab.

If you are running Linux, check the man page ('man crontab').

Re: crontab

A. Clay Stephenson — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 20:32:20 GMT

You are the victim of Linux's "improved" crontab. Why they insist on "fixing" things that have been working for decades is beyond my understanding. In this case it means every 2nd (every other) day at 00:05. This syntax is not understood by the standard flavors of UNIX.