crontab settings

Question

I'm having trouble running a cron job at particular times during the day.

Will this crontab setting run the command at 3am, 6am, noon, 6pm, and 9pm?

0 3,6,12,18,21 * * * command

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 07 '11 at 15:43

5

If that is in a user crontab (edited with crontab -e or crontab -e -u username), then yes.

If that is in the system crontab (/etc/crontab), it needs a username, i.e.

0 3,6,12,18,21 * * * run-as-this-username command

answered Nov 07 '11 at 15:43

ThatGraemeGuy

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the job already runs each hr. – MB34 Nov 07 '11 at 16:06

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 07 '11 at 15:51

2

Your cron specification is correct. If it doesn't appear to be running, it may be a PATH problem (i.e., your script references something in /usr/local/bin). If that's the case, you can stick something like

PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin

etc., at the top of your crontab to set the PATH for the cron jobs. (You can do something like "echo $PATH" at the command line to see the current PATH).

answered Nov 07 '11 at 15:51

cjc

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path is not a problem – MB34 Nov 07 '11 at 16:08

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 07 '11 at 15:57

1

Yes, afaik, this should work. Did you already try it?

edited Nov 07 '11 at 15:57

Bart De Vos

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answered Nov 07 '11 at 15:38

Sn0opy

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no but it already runs using this: 0 * * * * command – MB34 Nov 07 '11 at 16:06

crontab settings

3 Answers3