topic Re: Annual cron job running weekly in Operating System - Linux

Annual cron job running weekly

GraceO — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 15:08:42 GMT

I have a cron job that is supposed to run once annually that decided it wanted to run weekly. Here is my entry in cron

00 14 23 4 1 /mis_scripts/annual_care_scripts.batch #Annual Akanda Scripts

It's supposed to run on April 23rd. It's been running on every Monday since the beginning of April. Prior to that it wasn't running. Could my cron table be corrupt?

Re: Annual cron job running weekly

Ivan Ferreira — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 15:34:49 GMT

This is because you set the last number to 1 that means monda. Set it to *, like this:

00 14 23 4 * /mis_scripts/annual_care_scripts.batch #Annual Akanda Scripts

Re: Annual cron job running weekly

GraceO — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:52:20 GMT

I was wondering about that. I have other jobs with specific dates (month, day defined) and the day of week not * that do not run weekly. Strange. I'll try changing the 1 to a *.

Re: Annual cron job running weekly

Stuart Browne — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 17:41:42 GMT

As Ivan said, it was due to that last number.

Re-read the man page for crontabs (man 5 crontab), and you'll find out that there are some complementary rules with regards to mixing all the fields together.

Generally, the day-of-week will complement day-of-month, causing it to run on both.

Re: Annual cron job running weekly

GraceO — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 17:49:06 GMT

That makes total sense. The other jobs are run in May and August. I'll fix those, too. Thanks.

Re: Annual cron job running weekly

GraceO — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 17:53:03 GMT

Thanks for the help! I misunderstood how to use the 'day of week'.